


Strange Magic: Doctor Who AU

by abutterflyobsession



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Doctor Who AU, F/M, Marianne and Dawn are Time Lords, strange magic doctor who au, strange magic/doctor who crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 71,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9107608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abutterflyobsession/pseuds/abutterflyobsession
Summary: Dawn and Marianne are Time LordsSunny is a hapless bystanderBog just wants a drink. And his guitar back.





	1. Chapter 1

Broden Broderick King—known as Bog to his friends and, lacking those, his mother—wove his way home on rubbery legs. One drink too many had a powerful transmutation effect on his joints, turning them into some unclassified form of part-time liquid. For some stretches of his walk home his knees behaved as knees were supposed to, bending at all the right times, but they were prone to suddenly giving way entirely and pitching him off to the side. After slamming his shoulder into multiple walls and being nearly swallowed whole by a hedge, Bog tried to keep a hand on any handy walls or railing as a means of keeping himself from flying off the face of the earth.

Just then the possibility of detaching from earth's field of gravity and hurtling off into the stars seemed very real and very terrifying. To float in the great stretches of emptiness between the pinpoints of starlight, no sound, no direction, no anchor. Spend a virtual eternity drifting through the void before bouncing off a star and drifting once more.

But wasn't that what he was doing already?

Drifting through existence, from one weekend to the next, bouncing around like a pinball, his course directed by the happenstance of walls and other random obstacles. Plugging his way through the week so that he could hand his paycheck to his mother and then head off to a bar to get entirely, completely drunk. Bog prided himself on his wholehearted commitment to his weekend binges. At least, he did during the binges. Saturday mornings were usually occupied with extreme regret and slowly sipping the tea his mother handed him along with her weekly lecture.

At least the pain of the hangover grounded him, anchoring him to the earth and turning his thoughts away from stars, voids, and all the other quasi-poetical nonsense of the inebriated mind. And it kept him grounded long enough to meet up with his band—not friends, just people he knew who put up with his spiky personality due to appreciation of his skills with a guitar—and play for tips on some street corner. Hands on the strings of his guitar, feet firmly on the ground, carefully ignoring the cheerful flights of fancy that the rest of the band had about “making it big someday”.

Someday.

Somedays were elusive things. Not yet here, possibly tomorrow, possibly years from now. No fixed date. Bog had once had his “someday” to look forward to. But time dragged on, relentless and eroding, wearing down and destroying the foundations he tried to build in anticipation for his “someday”. The twinkle of a diamond ring pulled off a slim finger and pushed back into his hand and the “someday” was gone forever.

Bog looked sadly at the stars, twinkling through the haze of the atmosphere, so cold. Diamonds and stars, both so cold and empty. Nothing more than pinpricks of light and sparkly little rocks

“--told you not to mess with the chameleon circuit!”

The memory of light glancing off the faucets of a diamond faded out of Bog's mind as he turned his gaze from the stars and blinked at the sudden sound of voices that were emanating from an otherwise ordinary looking hedge.

“I just thought it would be useful to, you know, _blend_ a little better!” There was a sound like a playground swing squeaking as someone began to swing harder.

“Oh, please! People don't notice. People don't _care_. We could park a 60s themed diner in an empty lot and people would just wonder why they had never noticed that before.”

“I also thought that maybe something a little more portable would be good. I mean, how many times have you forgotten where we parked?”

“I did not forget where we parked! Half the ship broke off and everything, including our ride, drifting off and got caught in the orbit of the nearest planet. That is hardly my fault.”

“The point is that it wouldn't have happened if we had been able to keep it with us--”

“Please, we can't go around lugging a trunk everywhere we go--”

“It doesn't have to be a trunk! If you would just stop and think you'd realize that we could—oh, hello!”

While leaning toward the hedge to hear its conversation more clearly Bog felt his knees going liquid again and found himself falling through the hedge in a tangle of long, uncoordinated limbs. A perky female voice greeted him and began talking cheerfully, but Bog was too busy thrashing around in the hedge of pay attention to what she was saying. Every time he thought he had surfaced he found himself embedded further in the bush, broken branches stabbing at him through his leather jacket and infiltrating his collar to spring an attack on his bare skin. The sound of the swing had stopped, then resumed again, faint and abandoned.

When someone grasped the collar of his jacket and gave a sharp yank Bog was sure that the hedge had began to take more aggressive measures against him. But he was suddenly free of the hedge, laying on his back, staring up at the stars. Well, partially free. His lower legs were still inside the bush, resting uneasily on a bed of twigs and leaves.

“Boggy!” The perky voice squealed in unrestrained delight. Despite the sky still being the inky blue-purple of night the sun had risen in Bog's vision, golden and blinding. “Boggy, I missed you!”

“Really?” Bog slurred, scrunching his eyes and trying to bring the sun into focus, “'M not usually a morning person.”

“Boggy? Are you okay?”

“'M fine. Can drive. Just gimme my keys and I'll go home.”

“He's drunk,” Another voice, not at all perky, said shrewdly.

“Just had a couple,” Bog said defensively.

“Why are you drunk?” The bright voice asked, the sun tilting to one side in a gesture of confusion, “Why were you in a bush? Are you okay? We brought you your guitar back! Well, you brought _a_ guitar back. Just like we promised!”

“Thanks?”

There was a tapping noise and when Bog peered past the sun he could see a hand with purple-painted nails tapping on a wristwatch.

“Uh,” Said the wristwatch in an embarrassed sort of way.

“What?” The sun asked, immediately taking note of the wristwatch's tone, “What's wrong?”

“Um. We may be a little . . . early.”

“Early? How early?”

“About . . . two years?”

“ _Two years_?”

“C'mon, that's pretty close. In the grand scheme of things it's practically nothing. Considering the tiny space of time humanity has existed on earth compared to the age of their solar system--”

“So he hasn't even met us yet?”

“Technically he has _now_.”

“And you promised no more paradoxes!”

“Please, it's a just a small paradox! A tiny one. It's hardly a paradox at all. I've had bigger paradoxes for breakfast and didn't even get indigestion.”

The wristwatch and the sun launched into a hush argument that Bog was unable to follow. He lay on his back, staring up at the stars, trying to figure out why these people had his guitar. Had he left it at the bar? No, he hadn't taken it with him, he was pretty sure.

“Sorry, Boggy,” The sun said, setting something down next to him, “See you later!”

The wristwatch stood next to him for a few moments and he saw a pair of sturdy leather boots hesitate in the grass. One nudged him gently in the ribs.

“See you later.”

Turning his head, Bog saw the boots and a pair of pink high tops walk across the grass and disappear, a door slamming shut behind them.

An unearthly screeching startled him into sitting up, trying to avoid being hit by what sounded like a car issuing its death rattle. The liquid that usually resided in Bog's knees how swirled in his head, making everything swim. When the water calmed, the world settling down around him, Bog saw only an empty playground, one swing drifting gently back and forth while all the rest hung still. A rectangle was pressed into the sand by the slide, footprints churning up the ground around it.

There was no one there.

Just a guitar case sitting in the grass next to Bog.

It wasn't his.


	2. Chapter 2

“Um, look, I was just trying to get this back to the guy from the bar.”

Sunny held up the pink pendent, it's gold chain wrapped around his fingers. If he could have he would have just pushed the pendent into the woman's hand and bolted for the door. All he had wanted was to see if he could pick up a gig with the street corner band who performed near his neighborhood on weekends. He had not wanted to be forcibly abducted, shoved into a box, and whisked off to . . . he wasn't sure where, actually.

To be fair, the abduction had been well timed. He wasn't sure he would have been able to outrun those . . . those _things_ that had been chasing him. Not even his parkour skills had been enough to elude his chasers, though he had flipped over half a dozen walls and climbed the side of a building that very few other people would have been able to scale.

To be even fairer, the box he had been shoved into was, well . . .

“Bigger,” Sunny said breathlessly, clinging to the railing that wrapped around the edge of the room, “On the inside. It's bigger on the inside.”

“Thanks for noticing,” The brunette woman said with a sarcastic twist of her purple lips. She managed to look vastly superior despite having one leg stretched over the sort of console in the middle of the room, her boot keeping a switch from flipping back off. Her right hand was spinning the dial on an old-fashioned rotary phone while her left hand swung a antiqued looking computer screen around to face her.

“Isn't it fun, though?” The blonde woman flashed a blinding smile at Sunny.

“Um. Sure?” He said, in no way having fun but unwilling to disappoint that bright face with its surrounding halo of fluffy golden hair. And he didn't really want to distract her when she was holding the ends of several pieces of string that were apparently important in keeping multiple sparking pieces of machinery from jolting out of their settings.

The whole room was jolting, actually.

Like they were inside a snow globe that someone had picked up and given a vigorous shake and when snow failed to swirl around inside they had only shaken it harder, in the stubborn belief that with enough effort the snow would appear. There was a horrible sawing noise, like someone sawing on guitar strings with a dull knife, and the round lights set into the walls kept flickering.

“We've got a stubborn one and that Yectumial crystal is creating a drag!” The sarcastic brunette said, her face pinched with concentration as she hung onto handle of the monitor, the whole room tipping to one side.

“We've got to compensate for it or we'll be ripped apart in the time vortex!”

“I _know_!”

“I was just _saying_!”

“Well, don't _say_! Just _do_.”

“I'm holding together the shielding generators with half a spool of Galaxtonian thread, I think that this qualifies as doing something!”

“Why is there only half a spool? There was a full spool last week! Tell me you didn't use it to do your hair again.”

“Actually, it was to fix that knob _somebody_ ripped out of the console after they had one too many daiquiris at Marie Antoinette's card party!”

“Daiquiris weren't invented then, I couldn't have possibly--”

“Caused a time paradox by introducing them over a century early?”

“Oh, like you're one to talk! Introducing potatoes into pre-New World Europe! The time ripples from that still haven't settled down!”

Somewhere a bell was clanging.

Something underneath the console exploded and cables writhed free of their settings. Sunny tucked his head down and squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if this was going to be the end of him.

He'd been wondering that a lot today.

Then everything went still.

The sudden change was as jarring as the chaos and noise had been. Hugging the railing for dear life, Sunny felt like he had gone deaf. Or maybe it was so quite because he was dead.

Someone cheered.

Did people cheer in the afterlife?

Sunny opened his eyes in time to see the two woman exchanging high-fives. The blonde, bright and shiny as a new penny, twirled around, “That was amazing! That was brilliant!”

“Thank you,” The brunette said smugly, folding her arms and leaning back against the console like it hadn't just been on fire.

“I was talking about _me_ ,” The blonde corrected, twirling past.

“Um?” Sunny asked, standing up straight but keeping his hands tight on the railing. He didn't trust this room not to start moving up and down again. And he could see severed cables hanging down under the glass floor around the console, still flickering with the occasional spark.

Both women turned in sync to look at Sunny, having obviously forgotten he existed.

“I forgot about your date,” the brunette remarked.

“He's not my date,” the blonde said, nose in the air, “He's a hapless bystander caught up in our eccentric lifestyle. Not that I would necessarily say no if he asked me out.”

The blonde smiled and wiggled her fingers at Sunny.

The brunette grabbed her arm and made her stop, “You're the one who pulled him in here. You're responsible for him. Go . . . go water him or something. Put him in a cupboard until we can get back earthside and drop him back into his natural habitat.”

“What is going on?” Sunny burst out, “What were those things chasing me? Who are you guys? Is this a kidnapping? Have I been kidnapped? Why would you even kidnap me, I have six brothers and my parents have like _no_ money--”

“We're harvesting your organs,” The brunette said, deadpan, pulling off her scorched hoodie and rolling up the sleeves of the sweater she had been wearing underneath.

“We are _not_ harvesting your organs!” The blonde said quickly, shooting a sharp look at her friend, “We're—we're _rescuing_ you! I'm—my name is—um . . . you can call me Dawn! Hi, I'm Dawn!”

A slender hand with streaks of oil decorating it was offered to Sunny.

“Um, Sunny,” He said, prying one hand off the railing to take Dawn's hand. She was taller than him, but most people were. She was wearing a rumpled brown pinstripe suit and tie. The shirt was a light sky blue and the tie was a vivid floral pattern. Sunny wasn't sure what look she was going for, aside from possibly eccentric academic.

“No, no, _Dawn_.”

“No, _I'm_ Sunny.”

“Looks more scrambled than sunny,” The brunette remarked, adjusting a pair of goggles over her eyes before slipping under the console floor.

“Nice to meet you, Sunny!” Dawn said loudly, ignoring her friend, “Did you know your face is speckled?”

“Uh,”

“It's very cute.”

“Uh, thank--”

“Why do you have an activated Yectumial crystal?”

“A . . . a what?”

“That,” Dawn pointed at the pendent still wrapped around Sunny's left hand.

“It isn't mine, actually.”

There was a bark of laughter and the brunette poked her head out from under the floor, “Let me guess, you were holding it for a friend?”

“Hah, well, Bog isn't exactly a _friend_. I don't think he really does friendship. Or friendliness. Or any human interaction that isn't strictly necessary.”

“Sounds like my kind of people,” The brunette said as she slipped back under again, “Hope I never meet him.”

“Look, we all went out for a drink after playing a few songs outside the coffee shop—that one on the corner of Rydstrom and Wood, with the name that's a pun--”

“Coffee shops with names that are puns are a universal phenomena,” The floor remarked, then swore when something started sparking, “If we hadn't just picked you up off that smog-covered mudball then I wouldn't even know what solar system you were supposed to be from, based off that information.”

“Remember that cemetery planet?” Dawn put in, “They had one called 'The Grounds Keeper'. Kind of a nice thing, having a light note to balance all the general mourning and grieving. Though, their headstone cookies they passed out to the kids, iced with the name of your dearly departed, was a little be insensitive, I thought.”

“They were gingersnaps, though. You can't beat gingersnaps.”

“Cemetery . . . planet?” Sunny asked weakly.

“Okay,” Dawn said brightly, “You were at a coffee shop, picking up a pun, when . . .?”

“Ah, no, we went to a bar. And Bog kind of started a fight and I ended up holding his stuff, then he kind of got arrested and I was going through his bag to find his information and drop the stuff off at his house.”

And never go back to that bar or that coffee shop again.

Sunny had just wanted some fellow musicians to hang out with on weekends. He didn't need to be involved in bar fights. If taking cover under a booth counted as being involved.

“This swampy guy definitely sounds like the right sort,” A hand waved from beneath the floor, “Gimme my sonic and a pair of pliers.”

Dawn picked something that looked sort of like a mechanical wand off a chair and tossed it at the waving hand. The hand caught it and whisked back out of sight. Dawn pulled a rusted tool chest out from under a stack of books and began to rummage through it.

“Go on,” She prompted Sunny with a wave of her hand.

“Uh, this,” Sunny held up the pendent, “Was rattling around in the bottom of his bag. I think it came out of its case. I was trying to find the box and put it away, when . . .”

The street lights had flickered.

The pink gems of the flower pendent had stuck in the cut on his hand. He had sliced a shallow cut in his palm when he put his hand down on some broken glass at the bar. He had been worried that getting blood on the jewelry might ruin it or something and tried to clean it off.

Something in the shadows outside the circle cast by the street light had moved.

Sunny had been on top of the nearest wall before he even fully processed what he had seen. Being exceptionally small—not even breaking five feet in height—he had learned to find high ground first, assess the situation second.

“Wait, wait, why am I even telling you guys about this?” Sunny interrupted himself, “You kidnapped me!”

“Why would I bother?” The brunette scoffed, “I don't want you here!”

“Look, I have to get this stuff back to Bog,” His eyes scanned the room and located Bog's guitar wedged under a stereo system someone had disemboweled, “Then get home. I've got to work tomorrow.”

“Sunny, I really don't think you understand . . .” Dawn began.

“No, no,” The brunette popped up and pushed her goggles back into her fly-away hair, “I love this bit.”

Ignoring them both, Sunny grabbed up the guitar and bag, slinging them over his shoulder and marching to the door. He yanked it open, taking a step back to avoid the door, then looked out into . . .

“Is that . . . the _moon_?”

The pale, pocked surface of the moon slid past the open door, close enough for Sunny to see the American flag planted on its surface.

“Interesting question,” The brunette propped her chin on a fist, “'Dawn' here has a theory that it's actually a giant egg.”

“Don't tease him,” Dawn ordered, pulling Sunny a safe distance away from the open door, “There's a bubble of atmosphere around the TARDIS, but it won't keep you from floating away if you fall out.”

“I thought . . . I thought I got pulled into a porta-potty! But it's a _rocket_? Is that what all the bouncing and shaking was about? We were taking off? Wait, how are we breathing? How is there gravity?”

“Porta-potty,” The brunette repeated flatly, a gleam of murder creeping into her eyes. Sunny had seen something similar in Bog's eyes just prior to the fight.

“Look,” Dawn intervened, “How is he going to know what a British police box from fifty years ago looks like? Now, Sunny, let's start again. I'm Dawn, this is . . . um . . . this is my sister. We're not human, this is our ship--”

“You fly around in a porta-potty?”

“Please try not to say that again, please. Not when she's holding a laser-wrench. As I was saying, you're being chased by some Vashta Nerada--”

“Those could not possibly have been Vashta Nerada!” Dawn's sister bounced to her feet, “they were going solid! They were dragging on the TARDIS! They were after that crystal!”

“Well, I'm calling them Vashta Nerada! Shadows that eat people! That's what we're dealing with!”

“ _Eat people_?” Sunny's voice slipped into an embarrassingly high register, “Is this some sort of joke? Are there cameras? Is some celebrity going to come out and tell me I've been punked?”

The moon had slipped out of sight and now a field of stars was visible through the open door. Dawn closed the door.

“Ugh,” Dawn's sister rolled her eyes, “Like I said before, let's just put him in a cupboard until we can put him back where he came from.”

“I think he's doing really well, considering,” Dawn threaded her arm through Sunny's and guided him toward a chair, “And if you've got the systems patched let's just hop forward a few hours to daylight and we can take a walk in that park near where we found him.”

“I thought you preferred your dates to take you on long walks on the beach,” Dawn's sister grumbled, flicking switches on the console with angry energy. She hit a small bell with a mallet and then pulled a lever. The room shook a little bit, then stopped. It felt rather like a car suddenly parking.

Dawn's sister stomped over to the door and flung it open.

Somewhere outside birds were singing and fresh air blew gently through the interior of the alleged spaceship.

Daylight poured in.

Then a large, monstrous shape appeared in the doorway.

Sunny jumped up, thinking it was whatever shadowy creature that had been chasing him last night.

The black silhouette ducked its head and took a step inside.

“Where,” it asked, “Is my guitar?”


	3. Chapter 3

Bog had had a bad night.

Worse than usual, anyway. He would classify most of his existence as falling on the bad end of the spectrum. Mostly he was used to that though.

Bog had had an _exceptionally_ bad night.

That new guitar player and vocalist—Sammy?--had vanished with Bog's guitar and bag. Once Bog had extracted himself from behind bars he contacted the other members of the band to find out this Sammy's information. All Bog's calls went straight to voicemail and when he showed up at the kid's house he was told Sammy hadn't come home the night before.

Bog hoped the kid hadn't been mugged or something.

He'd never get his guitar back if some hoodlum fenced it.

In the end he had made his way back to the bar to ask if anyone had seen where the kid had gone. Once the owner stopped yelling at him he was told that Sammy had gone off toward the nearby park, guitar case in tow. The bar owner had then swiped at Bog with a broom and threatened to make Bog pay for the damage caused by the fight.

“I'm sure there's more of this stuff in the trash heap you dug it out of in the first place!”

It was a bright and lovely morning. Just enough clouds in the sky to make the sunrise look spectacular before they all cleared away, leaving nothing but clear blue sky and warm yellow sunlight.

Bog screwed his eyes up against the unrelenting beauty of it, rolling his shoulders forward and ducking his head down as he stalked toward the park. Several people crossed the street to avoid passing him on the sidewalk. Which was just as well, because he walked in the middle of the sidewalk and didn't bother stepping to the side to let other people by.

After a brawl and a sleepless night he probably looked more like dead warmed over than usual. All he wanted was a large cup of black coffee, a stiff shot of whiskey, and the bacon and eggs platter they served at that crummy diner around the corner from his apartment.

But no.

He had to go track down that wide-eyed little ninny who had probably run off to the park to hide from the fight at the bar. Probably tucked into a tree, rigid with terror. And if he wasn't, well, Bog would fix that. Because it wasn't bad enough that the kid had run off with Bog's guitar, he had also taken that stupid piece of gaudy jewelry. A precious family heirloom, according to Bog's mother. Been in the family for ten generations, she said, originally as a raw gem and eventually cut up and set in the flower pendent. And if his Aunt Aura was to be believed the thing was cursed.

At the moment Bog was inclined to believe her.

The park was mostly empty, save a few joggers and dog-walkers. Bog went around shaking trees and kicking at bushes, seeing if Sammy or the stolen loot would pop out. After a few minutes he came across a big blue box sitting in the middle of the gazebo usually used for bands and the like.

It looked like a porta-potty. From a distance, anyway.

The door of it was open inward and he heard voices. He would have walked on, not interested to find out what multiple people were doing stuffed together in a box, except he heard the high-pitched squeak that he had come to recognize as a noise Sammy made when distressed.

Bog was up the steps to the gazebo in a flash, determined to drag the kid out of the box and demand an explanation.

“Where,” he growled, ducking his head to look inside the box, “is my guitar?”

“Whoa,” a female voice said, “I thought I landed us back on earth.”

“Hey,” Another woman said in chiding tones, “that's rude!”

“How many of you are there--” Bog blinked, eyes adjusting to the light inside the box, then blinked again when he couldn't resolve the actual size of the room to his expectations, “--in here?”

“Should I count the cyberman head in the fridge?” The first woman said, her words obscure but her tone clearly sarcastic.

Bog continued blinking.

He walked outside.

Walked around the possible porta-potty.

Walked back inside it.

Sammy was in there, along with two women Bog didn't know. He skipped over the blonde one who looked far too cheerful and directed his question to the darker woman who was painted up with purple lipstick and eyeshadow and looked as short on coffee as he felt.

“ _What_ is going on here?”

“Scottish?” The dark woman frowned, “I swear I'd gotten us to America.”

“I'm a transplant,” Bog said gruffly, hoping to skip past the pleasantries and introductions, “What's with this trick box? And what are you doing in it, Sammy?”

“Sunny,” The small man corrected, “I--”

“You know what?” Bog grabbed his guitar case and bag from Sammy—Sunny, “I don't care.”

“This must be the swampy guy,” The dark woman nodded in bored approval.

Bog rifled through his bag, checking everything was there. Almost everything was.

“Necklace,” Bog commanded, holding out a hand.

“Humans don't have black fingernails,” The dark woman said to the blonde one, as if making a point.

“Time Lords don't have purple fingernails,” The blonde one responded with a tiny sigh, “Stop being rude.”

Bog dropped his hand, “What is your problem, lady?”

“Should I list my top ten or just my current ones?”

The dark woman was small. Or possibly average in height. It was hard to tell when Bog himself was so very tall and when the woman was standing next to the very small Sunny. His sense or proportion hadn't recovered from a box that was apparently bigger on the inside. Or smaller on the outside.

Anyway, the woman was very much smaller than Bog's gangling form, about the right size to be nervous at having him loom over her. She displayed no such nervousness, only a grouchy impatience at having her time wasted. Her unexpected indifference to Bog's height and appearance made him look at her a little more closely, his curiosity piqued.

She was wearing a sweater with buttons sewn randomly over the front, black buttons on black fabric so that you didn't really notice until the light glanced off them and you caught a glimpse of a constellation out of the corner of your eye. Heir sleeves were rolled up and her arms with dirty with grease, similar to how Bog's looked when he had been working on his bike. A pair of goggles were pushed back into her tangle of fly-away hair, brown with hints of auburn. Golden brown eyes, the lightest thing about this dark little woman, looked at him dully from a frame of purple eyeshadow.

There was something about her eyes that made Bog uneasy. Something familiar, something old, something . . .

“Because,” the woman went on, “I also have them in alphabetical order.”

“Do you want to play that game, lady? Which of us have got it worse?”

“I'd win,” The woman shrugged, bored, “Why don't we just arm wrestle?”

“Are you serious? I'd snap your arm off without even trying!”

“No!” The blonde one pushed between them, shoving them apart, “We are not doing that again! Not after last time. Hi, you must be Bog! I'm Dawn, nice to meet you! You have lovely eyes, did you know? Seriously, I could get lost in them like some sort of sapphire ocean.”

“Uh,” Bog said, automatically shaking the hand offered to him.

“And your pendent is actually an artifact of non-terrestrial origin and seems to be attract all sorts of unpleasant things that have been chasing Sunny. He seems to have activated it with his blood, somehow. Which is very interesting, because there are only a few things that work like that and most of them--”

“Give it back, it's my mom's and I need to get it cleaned and back home before she flips her lid.”

“I didn't steal it,” Sunny spoke up, wincing slightly when Bog swung around to look at him, “I was going to drop this stuff at your house tonight. Or, last night? Because like ten minutes ago it was the middle of the night.”

“Time machine,” Dawn explained.

“Fascinating. Pendent. Now.”

“Whoops,” The dark woman whisked the chain off of Sunny's hand and danced up a few steps and around to the other side of a console that sat smack in the middle of the box's inexplicably large interior, “Can't do that, marsh man.”

“Give that back before I call the cops!”

“Oh, hang on, I'll just arrest myself,” The woman stood still for a moment, “There, I'm safely contained in a police box.”

“You'll wish I called the cops if you make me take that back myself, lady.”

“Look,” She was dangling the pendent in the air, pointing some gadget at it that made a strange whistling noise, “I can't just let you wander around with what appears to be a dangerous magnet. Or beacon. Because it's giving off a signal. Luckily it can't broadcast outside the TARDIS but take it outside and you're going to have a really bad day.”

“Sounds like a typical day.”

“Please don't be stubborn about this. I know what I'm talking about.”

“Give that to me!” Bog darted a hand across the console.

She swung a monitor around to deflect his hand.

“Listen, I'm brilliant. I'm clever. I, a brilliant and clever person who has forgotten more than you could learn in your tiny lifespan, am telling you that walking about with this little trinket is going to get you killed.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Oh, give that to me!” Dawn snatched the pendent off of the other woman, “Stop showing off and just show him.”

Dawn went over to the door and held the pendent up to the light, “Ready to disrupt the signal?”

The dark woman pressed a button on the gadget and the end of it lit up purple, “Ready. Watch yourself . . . _Dawn_.”

“Okay,” Dawn squared her shoulders.

Sunny looked apprehensive.

Bog folded his arms and thought about coffee.

With a deep breath, Dawn took a step forward and held the pendent outside the doors, her eyes riveted on the jewel petals, face set in concentration, her whole body tense and ready to move.

Seconds passed.

The dark woman dug in her pocket and pulled out a wrist watch, consulting it briefly.

The pink flower swayed slightly on the end of the chain.

The dark woman tapped the wrist watch with a purple fingernail, the sound making Bog turn to look at her, a thought on the tip of his brain.

“Any minute,” Dawn remarked to her restless audience.

“Any minute and I'll lose my patience,” Bog growled, the vague memory flitting out of reach again.

“Would you _please_ \--”

Dawn turned, her smooth little face pinched into a frown. The moment her eyes were off the pendent something slammed into the side of the box, covering the doors and blocking out the sun.

Something black was in the air, like smoke, seeping in through the doors and reaching to swallow up Dawn's hand.

There was an earsplitting noise, like some sort of shrieking machine.

Dawn slammed onto the floor, away from the door, Sunny having knocked her away from the reaching cloud of smoke. The dark woman stood over them, aiming her electronic wand at the cloud like it was a weapon, the look on her face telling Bog that it probably was.

“Get the door shut!” She ordered. Her dull boredom was gone and she looked murderous, her golden eyes burning with it, “Now, now, now!”

Bog threw himself at the door, seeing that whatever the shrieking wand was doing it was effective. The cloud was thinning. But still thick, and apparently solid enough to keep him from simply slamming the door. He put his shoulder against the door, digging his feet into the floor, glad that his boots had a heavy tread and that the floor wasn't slick.

The door gave way and slammed shut.

Bog slipped to the floor, scuttling awkwardly away from the door, seeing traces of black smoke eating black holes in the wood.

There was a moment of ringing silence.

“Roll call,” The dark woman said, tucking her gadget away in a pocket.

“All good,” Dawn said from the floor, raising her hand and giving a thumbs up.

“I'm . . . alive?” Sunny said, not sounding entirely convinced.

“I'm mad as fury,” Bog snarled, “What was _that_?”

“That, marsh man, was what will happen if you walk out that door with the pendent in your pocket.”

She held out a hand.

Bog accepted it and she helped him to his feet.

“Well, I guess you were right about that,” He scratched the back of his head, “Who are you supposed to be, anyway?”

The dark woman brushed herself off, rolling down her sleeves and snatching a coat off the railing. She slipped it on, the black length of it falling to her knees, a glimpse of red lining showing as it settled into place. She walked over to the console and flipped a few switches with her greasy hands.

“Better move us a bit,” She grabbed a lever, “Confuse the our cloudy friend. And you can call me The Doctor.”

She slammed the lever back and the room started to shake.

“Now hold on!”


	4. Chapter 4

“So, time machine?”

Sunny asked this from the floor of the . . . time machine. Somehow those smoky shadow things were even worse during the day. Daylight was supposed to be safe from those nebulous, hiding-under-the-bed sort of monsters. So Sunny decided that it wouldn't hurt to just stay on the floor and take a breather. Try and process recent developments.

Dawn apparently agreed with this idea, because she was laying on the floor next to him, her ankles crossed and resting on the railing above them, her pink high tops glittering faintly underneath a layer of dust and grease. The pendent was still wrapped around her hand and she carefully unwound it and dropped it on the floor.

“Time machine,” Dawn confirmed with a nod, stretching and clasping her hands behind her head, “It's a TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Type 40. Completely obsolete and falling apart at the seams. Ancient.”

“Aged,” Dawn's sister called from the console, “Like a fine wine. They don't build them like this anymore.”

“There's a reason why not,” Dawn retorted, “Why couldn't you have stolen something a little less . . . crumbling?”

“Because you don't get craftsmanship like this anymore. Bell and whistles and everything designed to look like an ipod. This old girl has character. Personality. And she was the only one in the lot that was unlocked.”

Bog snickered and said something snide, but Sunny had just noticed that Dawn's eyes were a lovely, sparkling blue, and he couldn't focus on anything else.

“Hm,” Dawn said thoughtfully, “I think I've decided.”

“Decided what?” Sunny asked, distracted by how cute Dawn's face looked all smudged up with grease.

“That I like brown eyes better than blue. You don't hear enough about brown eyes, which seems strange to me. Like, carnelian is a brownish gemstone. Why don't more brown eyes get compared to carnelian? Or dark coffee? Or the shiny brown top on a flan? The darker, the prettier, really.”

“Wha . . .”

“Anywhere in time and space.”

“Huh?”

“The TARDIS. It can go anywhere in time and space. We were just in the 60s, actually. Went to go watch them land on the moon and . . . and something else. I forget. The clothes are just so much fun. My sister hated the fashions, but I loved them.”

“Okay, are you, like, an alien?”

“Mmhm,” Dawn nodded, “Time Lord.”

“You don't really look alien.”

“It's what's inside that counts.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I've got two hearts, for example.”

“Oh.”

“Yup. My sister is kind of taking me on a tour of . . . well, everything, really. I kind of haven't gotten out much until recently.”

“Your sister . . . she's a doctor?”

“Yup!”

“Of what? Like, medicine? Or book binding or something?”

“Yes and yes.”

“What's her name? It's a little weird just calling her “your sister”.”

“I'm the Doctor,” Dawn's sister suddenly loomed over Sunny, bending to pick up the necklace, “now get off the floor and stop flirting with my little sister.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Dawn dropped her feet off the railing and bounced to her feet, “I'm not a kid anymore! I'm—I'm--” she glanced quickly at Sunny and then back at her sister, “I'm twenty-three!”

“Really?” Sunny asked, standing up and testing his wobbly feet, “That's the same age as me--”

“You're one hundred and twenty- _two_ and a half,” the doctor cut in, “Too young to even have a TARDIS learner's permit.”

“But you let me fly her anyway!”

“Yes. _I let you_. And I can take away those privileges at any time. Now find a nice signal-scrambling box to put the cursed necklace in, thank you,” She dropped the pendent into Dawn's hand, “It's not going to bite you while we're in here.”

“One hundred and . . .” Sunny was gapping when Dawn grabbed his arm and pulled him along to help with her small quest.

“Twenty-two and a half?” Bog finished after Dawn and Sunny had gone, “And, what, you're an old maid of a hundred and twenty-five?”

The Doctor made a strange face, as if she couldn't decided on an expression. It twitched from a pained grimace, a scornful smile, and finally to a carefully neutral expression, “Certainly older than you, marsh man.”

“My name is Bog.”

“How is that better? Why did your mother hate you enough to name you Bog?”

“She hated me enough to name me Broden Broderick. _Anything_ is better than that. What about you? Did your parents actually name you 'The Doctor'? Sounds like they picked your career track early.”

“Maybe I prefer it to my given name. Maybe I think it makes me sound clever and prestigious.”

“You certainly don't _look_ very prestigious,” Bog said, casting an eye over her heavy boots, odd sweater, and magician's coat.

The Doctor wiped a greasy finger across Bog's nose.

“Now it matches your nails,” She said, deeply pleased with herself, snapping her goggles back over her eyes.

“Why do you think my mom's necklace is attracting ghost and ghouls?”

Bog followed the Doctor underneath the console, using the edge of his shirt to wipe off his nose. The space was cramped and he had to stoop almost double to fit. The Doctor barely had to duck her head as she navigated through bundles of looped cables.

“I _know_ it's sending out a signal that's something is responding to. Something strong enough to put a serious strain on the TARDIS when we tried to break free. I should be asking why your family has a powerful alien artifact.”

“As far as I knew it was just the ugly necklace my mom wears when she wants to look classy. The thing goes back in my family for decades and every generation has some story about the thing being cursed. Until now I thought that was just some colorful embroidering of the family legend.”

“Typical,” the Doctor waved her wand over some cables and then inspected the wand as if it had taken a reading, “Humans find a pretty rock and they stick it in a piece of jewelry and wear it everywhere without even bothering to find out what it is.”

“Okay, first of all, so sorry that my ancestors didn't suspect _aliens_ when they found a pretty pink rock. We kind of have a lot of pink rocks floating around here on earth, you know. Second, what is that thing?”

“Sonic screwdriver.”

“It looks nothing like a screwdriver.”

“It is sonic, though,” The doctor pressed a button and the screwdriver made a whistling noise.

“Does it actually turn screws?”

“On occasion.”

“What's it doing now?”

“Scrambling the speech centers of your brain so you stop asking me stupid questions.”

“Liar.”

“Wishful thinking. Everything is stable down here. If Dawn found a box then I'm going to get coffee.”

“Box!” Dawn held a small metal box above her head, “I think it used to hold some part of a dalek. Not any of the squishy bits, tho. At least, according to the label.”

Dawn lowered the box and took a pair of reading glasses out of her jacket pocket, putting them on so she could check the label again.

“What's a dalek?” Sunny asked in the tentative way of a man who wasn't sure he wanted an answer.

“Squiggly little octopus of hate inside a tin can of death and destruction,” the doctor said, taking the box.

“Why did you have the end of a dalek eyestalk,” Dawn asked, “Where did you even _get_ it?”

“Off a dalek. I needed some parts so I could reverse engineer their tech and trace the signal that . . . hm. Long story.”

“You actually fought daleks,” Dawn seized her sister by the lapels, “Why have I not heard about this? Tell me everything!”

“It isn't very interesting,” The doctor gingerly detached Dawn's hands from her jacket, leaving away from her sister's eager face, “I mean, Davros was just--”

“Did you meet _Davros_? As in, creator of the daleks? _That_ Davros?!”

“Uh, _Dawn_ , just go . . . feed your pet. Or take him for a walk.”

A quick glance at Sunny showed he looked pale and confused.

Dawn shoved the box containing the pendent at her sister and grabbed Sunny's hand, “We're going to go get coffee. See you later!”

“Be back in half an hour!” The doctor shouted after them, “ _Earth_ time!”

The doctor slammed the box closed and wedged it on top of the console.

“So, are you going to . . . I dunno, exorcise it?” Bog asked, “Because I'm going to need that back.”

“It's really not your color. Doesn't work with your whole spiky tree look you've got going on.”

“This from the grease-covered magician.”

“I was going for minimalism!”

“Well, you got magician.”

The doctor threw up her hands and walked off to search through a bookcase that was set into the wall. Strangely, the books were all still on the shelves, despite the earlier shaking and tilting of the room. But it didn't really matter because the Doctor started pulling books off the shelf, glancing at the titles, and dumping them on the floor.

“I'm not going to call you 'The Doctor', by the way.”

“If you say so, marsh man,” She shoved a stack of books into his arms, knocking the wind out of him, “Make yourself useful and look for anything about blood bonds.”

“Are these even in English? I mean, you're supposedly an alien, why would your books be in English?”

“They aren't. And I'm not speaking English.”

“Wait, what?”

“The TARDIS translates everything. Ugh, give me those. Just . . . just go get coffee or do whatever humans do when I'm not looking. Like sleep. Or polka.”

“The necklace . . .”

“We're standing in a time machine, marsh man. We can just nip back and return it to your mom before she even gave it to you.”

Not at all reassured by this, Bog got his guitar out and started tuning it and checking for damage. Luckily it had not been his acoustic guitar, which had belonged to his dad and was very old and fragile. This one was his electric and seemed to have come through its adventures without injury. He didn't have a speaker, but he started to strum on it anyway.

“There's a jack on the console,” the Doctor said, walking past with a book held up in front of her, a stick of chalk in her hand, “If you're going to make noise then make noise. I don't want to have to strain my ears trying to hear it.”

There was a jack in the console and Bog plugged in his guitar. A few experimental chords revealed that the speakers were apparently . . . everywhere. From all sides, from above, from below. There were even far off reverberations that indicated that there were other rooms in this time machine and there were speakers in them as well.

Bog settled down and began to play The Song That Never Ends.

The Doctor stiffened, her chalk squeaking on the blackboard she had been writing on.

“Is that _necessary_.”

“Very few of life's pleasures are.”

A book flew over his head.

He started to play something else.


	5. Chapter 5

“I don't know, anything with whipped cream and sprinkles!”

Dawn had studied the coffee shop's menu for at least five solid minutes, hands in her pockets, her tortoise-shell rimmed glasses resting on the end of her nose. Sunny wasn't sure if she was actually breathing and he jumped a little when she finally made her order.

“Hot cocoa?” Sunny suggested.

“Wait, wait, wait, I see Christmas-y doodads. Candy canes and shiny baubles for the tree. Is it December? Is peppermint in season again? Did we land in peppermint season? I mean, it's warm for peppermint season--”

“It is California,” Sunny pointed out.

“ _Is_ it? It is, isn't it? Give me something with peppermint, please. And, I mean, a ridiculous amount of peppermint. So much peppermint you look at it and go 'nah that's too much peppermint'. That's how much I want. And also enough black coffee to drown a medium-sized person in.”

Coffees obtained, the barista a little dazed, Dawn and Sunny set off back to the park. Sunny held the cardboard tray containing the black coffees, wondering if he should have gotten one for himself. His internal clock was saying it was time for bed, even if the sun was well-past risen.

One hand in the pocket of her pin-stripe jacket, a long brown overcoat flapping and swirling when she swiveled back and forth, Dawn meandered down the sidewalk, looking at everything with bright-eyed interest.

“End of the year, some time in the two thousand tens? Have the new Star Wars films come out yet?”

“Uh, you mean the prequels?”

“No, no. _Sequels_. Well, and some prequels. But never mention those other prequels in front of my sister unless you want to listen to a lecture on how George Lucas his an overrated hack. She really takes it too personally. No one is making her watch them.”

“Aliens . . . enjoy movies about aliens?”

“We like good theater. Besides, it's always a good laugh to see an asteroid belt made out of a bag of potatoes. You like Star Wars? I love Star Wars. I built my own lightsaber but my sister took it away after I cut a hole in a wall by accident. She says she locked it up but I think she just plays with it when I'm not around.”

“You _made_ a lightsaber? A working lightsaber?”

“Well, I had to fudge some things because the movie science doesn't work at all, but yeah. Makes the vroom noise and everything. By the way, if I'm babbling—and I'm usually babbling—you've got to just jump in and say your say because I'm not going to hit the brakes on my own.”

“Oh, no, it's fine. You're interesting to listen to. You're very enthusiastic about things. I just spent several hours hanging around Bog so it's nice to talk to someone who's actually capable of smiling.”

Sunny was kind of falling a little bit in love with how Dawn so sincerely enjoyed things. From whipped cream and sprinkles to dogs they passed in the street. She made everything seem extraordinary.

“Bog looks like someone put salt in his coffee,” Dawn agreed, “He does have lovely eyes, though. And it's cute how he blushes when he gets embarrassed.”

“You . . . uh . . . like him?”

“I like everybody. I like people. Places. Doing all the touristy things. My family isn't too happy with the idea of me wandering the universe but I was going to stifle at home. Then it all got so serious because of the war?”

“War?”

“The Time War. It's over now and I didn't see much of it. It was the daleks, you see. I got shoved off to some boring place to keep me safe. I don't know why they didn't send my sister with me. I didn't get to see her again until it was all over.”

“Isn't she older? Because older siblings have a way of shoving you into corners. I'm the youngest in a small crowd so I know all about it.”

“No, actually, we're twins.”

* * *

 

“Twins?” Bog twanged a guitar string in surprise, “But you're older, aren't you? And . . . different?”

“There was a little trouble with a time loop,” the doctor waved her chalk dismissively, “and Time Lords don't really do family resemblance. Well, yes, we used to look more alike, but, you know, people change.”

“I suppose,” Bog said, plucking out the introduction to _Mistreated_ , “So, you got older and Dawn didn't?”

“Essentially. It was safer. For the best.”

“And you travel through time? Doing what? Righting wrongs? Fixing history?”

“Hah! We're just on vacation. Indefinite vacation.”

“You have a box that can travel through time--”

“And space!”

“--and you use it to go on holiday? Not even going to try and kill Hitler? Or even just make a killing betting on horses you know will win because you've got tomorrow's results?”

Bog know that if he had a time machine there would be several things he'd want to go back and put right. Maybe go knock some sense into his younger self and never end up in the army, never come back from his tour with demons on his back. Never hurt her.

“Hitler is a fixed point of time,” the Doctor said, “Can't change it. Not that people haven't tried. You know how many assassination attempts there were? And they all failed, because if they had succeeded history would have splintered, past, present, and future all jumbled together. Some things can't be changed. They've got to be swallowed like bitter medicine.”

That last remark sounded more like the Doctor talking to herself than to Bog. It also sounded a lot like things he had heard at those counseling groups his mother had badgered him into going to.

“Are you a soldier?” Bog asked, strumming his way through snatches of the playlist from the day before.

The Doctor's chalk had been moving briskly across the blackboard but now it stopped dead and the Doctor went still.

“I believe,” She said after a very long pause, “I introduced myself as 'The Doctor'. Not 'The Medic' or 'The General'. So I'm certain that even your primitive mind can come to the correct conclusion that, no, I am not a soldier. Why? Are you a ballerina?”

“My career was limited to an appearance as a mouse in the Nutcracker when I was six.”

“You do know that now that you've said that I'm going to have to go back and see for myself. Are you sure you're not from Cheem, because you have some distinctly tree-like qualities and the thought of a tree doing ballet has just made my day. Or amused me for the next five minutes, anyway. No, wait, it's gone already and I'm annoyed.”

“You just seem like someone who's seen action.”

“Wait, wait, I added a tutu to the mental image and this may sustain me for at least three more minutes.”

“Like you've got a story that you don't feel like you can tell anyone.”

“You are ruining my enjoyment of a tree in a tutu.”

Admitting defeat, Bog changed the subject.

“What is a dalek, anyway?”

“Actually, I think I summed them up in a pithy and fairly accurate way earlier. One has to meet them in person, however, to truly understand how much their constant screeching grates on your nerves.”

“Screeching?”

“Screeching. Screaming. They're always screaming. It's kind of funny until you remember that they're actually screaming, that they're . . .”

The chalk marked its way across the board, drawing round symbols that Bog couldn't place as any language or maths that he had ever encountered before. The Doctor fell silent and did not even attempt to deflect the subject. She just ignored it entirely.

It was a good ten minutes before she spoke again, remarking cryptically, “At least it's not as bad as cybermen. Or, just not as bad in the same way. It's hard to rank bad things. I mean, what's worse: wet socks or burnt toast? Forgetting your tea until it's stone cold or finding the cap off the toothpaste? It's all just lumped together in a big pile of bad. There's no 'more bad' or 'less bad'. No, 'yes they ripped the tongues out of thirty people, but at least they're kind to puppies'.”

Pages turned and sticky notes were pressed onto pages. More symbols were chalked up on the board. Bog had just decided that the conversation really had ended this time when the Doctor resumed her monologue without any reference to the prolonged delay.

“Or is the kindness to puppies important? Is it the sign that they're not completely lost? That they've got a kernel of something decent left inside them? Or is it just a quirk of bad programming, another aspect of a disordered mind? How can it even matter when all the bad things pile up and cast a shadow over that pinprick of good . . .”

“Reminds me of one of my mom's little stories,” Bog interrupted, “Man walking along the beach. The tide has washed up so many starfish you can barely see the sand. The man is picking up starfish, one by one, throwing them back into the ocean--”

“And someone asks him how he thinks he can even make a difference and he tosses another starfish back into the ocean and says he made a difference to that one. Yes, yes, yes. Except. Except, what if he was ripping the arms off every other starfish? Saving half, destroying the other half. What sort of difference is that? It would have been better if he didn't do anything at all?”

Bog pondered this. “Why is he ripping them in half?”

“What?”

“Why is he ripping them in half? For what reason?”

“What does that matter?”

“I don't know. Might not.”

“Well, it doesn't. Are you sure you're not from Cheem?”

“I'm from Earth. Born and raised.”

“Because it would explain a lot if you--”

“Look, I'm one ugly son of a gun, I know. But a misfortune of facial structure does not an extraterrestrial make.”

“This is not a slight against your exemplary bone structure. Those cheekbones alone deserve to be cast in bronze for the sake of posterity. Haven't you ever thought you looked a bit . . . barkish? Leafy? Generally tree-like?”

“This joke is getting a little thin.”

“This is a scientific inquiry. Do you have problems with dry skin?”

“I don't think my health insurance is going to cover this consultation. And there are better ways to change the subject.”

“Who was changing the subject? This was just a natural progression of the conversation which you insist on having. I'm trying to get work done while you're just sitting there butchering classic rock.”

“Lady, that's the kind of thing you say just before a table gets thrown at your head. You may know all there is to know about flux capacitors but I know my rock and roll and I know I'm good.”

“Listen, you might be able to play a guitar. You might even be able to play a guitar decently, but you are no Elvis. Definitely not any of the Beatles, and David Bowie isn't even in the picture.”

“And I suppose you know this because you met all of them in their prime?”

“Got them all together for a jam session. I should let you listen to the tracks we laid down. I played the guitar and sometimes the triangle.”

“Of course you did,” Bog muttered, playing louder and slumping down in his seat, “Then you had tea with Nikola Tesla and helped him invent alternating current.”

“That was his own achievement. But we did grab lunch after dealing with that alien nano-virus Edison had 'totally under control'. Edison, my word. What a piece of work.”

“Have you figured out why my mom's necklace is haunted?” Bog asked, interrupting the Doctor's reminiscing, “I haven't got all day.”

“Yes, yes, you have. And despite constant distractions I have been forming a theory that--”

A bell began tolling, deep and resonating, like a bell in a church tower.

“Are you sure this time machine of yours doesn't have all the bells and whistles?” Bog called above the din.

“Shut up, the cloister bell means danger!”

“Danger?” Bog unplugged his guitar and stashed it in its case, “That cloud?”

The Doctor was at the console, smacking the side of a monitor until an image became clear, “No, this is something else. Disturbance in time. Someting that's not supposed to be here.”

“What, like you?”

“No! Like another TARDIS, but there must be something wrong with it. It's eating up power, pulling at the temporal rift.”

“Temper what?”

“Source of energy. Fine if you leave it alone. Wait, there's a message being sent out on all frequencies--”

* * *

 Sunny's head was swimming with fixed points in time, paradoxes, and time loops, but he was starting to get the gist of what Dawn was telling him. Time was much more flexible than he had imagined it.

“But, what about butterflies?”

“Butterflies?” Dawn asked, making horrible noises while she chased the dregs of her drink with her straw.

“Like, if you step on a butterfly then you could end up never being born.”

“Why would you step on a butterfly? That's horrible!”

“No, you see--”

“History is pretty tough. Just so long as you don't go around hitting it with a hammer it should be just . . .”

“Just?” Sunny prompted when Dawn trailed off.

“Ssh,” Dawn put a finger to Sunny's lips, “Did you hear that?”

Sunny shook his head.

“It almost sounded like the TARDIS. But running way to smooth for it to be my sister behind the controls. Ours technically requires a crew of six to fly properly.”

“Mmhm?”

“Follow me.”

Dawn took her finger away and grabbed Sunny's hand, endangering the coffee and he desperately tried to keep up while keeping the coffee from falling out of the tray.

“Look, if I drop this _you_ get to explain to Bog and your sister why they don't get any coffee!”

“I guess that's fair. I mean, I've got a few lives to spare. Now, it should be around here somewhere, I can _taste_ it!”

“I think that's car exhaust.”

They ran past a small corner hair stylist.

Dawn slammed to a halt and the coffee fell to its death.

She pulled Sunny around and back to the corner shop.

“Um, a hair stylist? I mean, your hair looks great, Dawn. I think you're good.”

“Thanks. Your hair is pretty great, too. No, it's just that this shop was definitely not here when we passed this corner on the way to the coffee shop.”

“It wasn't?”

“No.”

“And it's here now?”

“Yup.”

“Aaand where did it come from then?”

“Let's find out!”

Still holding Sunny's hand, Dawn marched through the store's entrance, calling out as she did, “Hey, do you guys do facials? Because I've been kind of patchy. Dry weather, you know.”

“Aw, honey,” The man at the reception desk flashed a sparkling smile, “You're just fine. Just as cute as ever.”

Dawn dropped Sunny's hand and launched herself at the receptionist, " _You_!"

* * *

 

“What's the message?”

“Hang on!” the doctor gave the monitor another whack, “It's . . . oh, no.”

Bog looked over her head at the screen and read the words flashing there, his confusion only deepening as he did.

“' _Hey there, buttercup_ '?”


	6. Chapter 6

> “Roland!”

Dawn's jaw dropped and she squeaked the name out in her excitement. 

Sunny was still adjusting to the stench of floral hairspray and the dazzling gleam of the salon's white and gold interior, barely able to make out that this Roland had disturbingly perfect golden hair. By the time Sunny's vision cleared Dawn had thrown her arms around Roland's neck and was talking a mile a minute.

“Your TARDIS is hilarious, I love it! My sister is going to love the joke. Does she know you're here? I thought you were stuck doing boring stuff with renovations and double-checking time lines. Did they let you off for a break?”

“Sort of took an unofficial vacation, honeybunch,” Roland said, staggering under Dawn's weight, “Thought I'd drop by and surprise you girls. Now, you haven't changed a bit, now have you, darlin'?”

This Roland, all glossy curls and sparkling smiles, struck a sour note with Sunny.

All his life Sunny had been overlooked, hidden in the shadows of smarter people, better looking people, and, of course, taller people. When someone did notice Sunny it felt good. Usually. There were some people who peered down from their lofty heights of wealth and talent to pick Sunny out of the crowd and decided that he could be a very useful henchman. More than once in his school days Sunny had found himself unexpectedly befriended by some popular student and was overwhelmed with the novelty of being included in their world. At least, until Sunny realized that he was spending more time fetching them coffee and doing their homework than actually hanging out with them. And they had been all smiles and friendliness until they decided that someone else would make a better minion to fetch and carry.

When Roland turned his glass-green eyes from Dawn and turned to look at him Sunny instinctively felt that this guy was one of those popular kids.

“This is Sunny!” Dawn said by way of introduction, “We found him being chased by monsters and by Bog. He's a musician and his hair is unbelievable. And I might not have changed, but my sister has! Have you seen her? She's got this whole dark punk vibe going on. Very rumpled and disinterested, though her careful makeup application testifies to a great deal of care. Aside from the joke, _why_ is your TARDIS being a beauty shop?”

“Hey, there, Sandy!” Roland said, widening his grin. He pushed Dawn away, ignoring her chattering, and extended a hand to Sunny, looking him straight in the eye.

Sunny had never trusted anybody who made a point of eye contact.

“It's _Sunny_ , actually--”

“Great to meet you! Is this your native guide, darlin'?”

“Uh, no,” Dawn said, losing a little bit of her cheerful luster, “Like I said--”

“And where's that lovely sister of yours?”

“Back at the—wait. Are you guys in the middle of an argument again? Because I remember when I was ninety-six you and she disagreed about something and she ran off and disappeared to the early twentieth century and had a shouting match with G.K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw about whether or not Eliza Doolittle should have ended up with Higgins or Freddie.”

“'Fraid so, sweetheart,” Roland nodded solemnly, “I suppose she's been prickly lately?”

“As a hedgehog! You'd better have a spectacular apology up your sleeve! Oh, you should bring her coffee. We were bringing her coffee but I made Sunny drop it. She likes it black now, in case you didn't know.”

“Oh, don't worry yourself,” Roland assured her, “I'm all up to date about my buttercup!”

* * *

 

“I don't understand where we're going or why I'm being dragged there!”

Bog had been unable to wrench his hand free of the Doctor's grip and found himself pulled out of the park and forced to make a run for the coffee shop Dawn and Sunny had gone to.

“I might need to use you as a makeshift shield!”

“Are you serious.”

“Also, I might need someone to keep me from committing murder, so if you could do me a favor and pull me back if I start to look blood-thirsty?”

“What, you mean more than you already do? Lady, I don't even know who you're supposed to be! As far as I know you're just some nut with a fancy box!”

“Never claimed to be anything else!”

Bog dug his heels in and dragged his hand free, “You'll have to pardon me if I don't think much of your credentials! I just want this stupid hunk of costume jewelry exorcised. Whatever else you have going on doesn't have anything to do with me!”

“You want to know who I am?”

“If you expect me to let you drag me across town, then, yeah, a bit of an introduction would be nice.”

The Doctor stood there, a small woman in a ratty sweater and magicians coat. An odd, laughable figure. Or, at least, she ought to have been.

“You know how the Earth revolves?” she stepped toward Bog, her presence far more commanding than her height should have allowed, “It's like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you that the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like its standing still.”

She looked up at Bog and he saw it in her eyes again. The strange depth. Her presence bigger than her form, her pain and age greater than those golden eyes should have been able to contain.

“I can feel it.”

She took Bog's hand and he wasn't sure he was breathing anymore. Like a weight was resting on his chest.

“The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can _feel_ it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we left go . . .”

She dropped his hand and Bog almost staggered. 

He remembered how he stared up at the stars after a few too many drinks, thinking of floating endlessly in the great emptiness between the stars, his clouded mind telling him to hold on tight to the solid surface beneath this feet, hold onto the world and keep himself from flying off.

And she, the Doctor, wasn't hanging on.

She had let go and was lost in the stars.

“That's who I am.” 

She started to head down the sidewalk, looking back over her shoulder, arching an eyebrow at him, “Coming with?”

Ever since he had come back home, putting the fighting and nightmares behind him, Bog had been holding tight to his little patch of dirt. Afraid to go forward for fear that what might follow him from the past. But now, looking at those golden eyes, that were only going to wait for a fleeting moment in time for him to make a decision, Bog let go and took a step forward into the unknown.

* * *

 

“You'd better go get that coffee! Should we catch up with you back at our TARDIS?”

“Oh, don't rush, darlin'!” Roland urged, “You and I have a lot of catching up to do!”

“Sure, do, sure do, but now isn't the best time. There's a few things we've got going on. Three, actually. No, wait, four things and a lizard. You know I adore small talk with you, Roland, so let's get together again soon!”

“Lizard?” Sunny asked, finding himself being led back toward the door.

“You haven't seen it yet? We're been trying to get it out of the vents for _weeks_. Or possibly we haven't actually started looking for it yet. Exposure to the time vortex does strange things to a lizard's chronology.”

The glass door of the salon swung shut before they reached it and the neon sign that said 'open' turned itself off.

Sunny couldn't help but think this was not good.

* * *

 

“What gave me away, darlin'?” Roland asked, sitting in one of the styling chairs, flipping a hand mirror idly back and forth, “Aren't you glad to see your dear brother-in-law?”

“Oh, always, we're just in a bit of a rush,” Dawn leaned on the closed door with crossed arms, “You know how it is. All of time and space yet you're always on the go. I should get back before my sister goes through caffeine withdrawal.”

“Look, I have no clue what's going on,” Sunny said, “But do we not like this guy?”

“Not a bit,” Dawn shook her head.

“Oh, good. I wasn't going to say anything if he was your friend, but since he isn't I just have to say he's kind of a sleaze.”

“Oh, very much. And he's using us as bait to lure out my sister, which is very insulting. Assuming I'll be helplessly forced to wait around for someone to rescue me.”

“I kind of didn't think you would,” Sunny said, a little bashful, “You seem like you've got things under control. It's kind of great.”

“I think you'd better keep your pet quiet,” Roland said, his charm slipping a little in his annoyance, “Ignorance is so tiresome.”

“Arrogance is worse,” Sunny replied, “It's harder to shake off.”

Dawn smiled with approval at this retort, standing up straight, hands in her pockets as she bounced back on her heels, “Are you busy later, Sunny? Because I have a proposal for you that involves all of time and space in a big blue box and I would like to hear your thoughts on it. Just keep that in mind.”

“Please tell me you're not going to flirt with the primitive natives the whole time we're waiting for my dear wife to show up.”

“Probably! But you won't have to wait too long for my sister.”

Dawn pulled her hands out of her pockets, producing a sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the door. It's blue light lined up with a purple glow on the outside of the door and Sunny realized that Dawn's sister was there, her own screwdriver in hand, the two resonating off each other.

The electronic shrieking made Sunny cover his ears and in a matter of seconds the glass door had exploded into shards and the Doctor was reaching through and tugging on the cord that turned the 'open' sign back on.

“Sorry to burst in on you like this, but I had an appointment,” She said, stepping through the empty door frame, boots crunching on the broken glass.

“Honestly, buttercup, if you had just _knocked_ I would have opened it for you!” Roland stood up, hand on his hip, mirror hanging loosely in his fingers, “You always did have such a turn for the dramatic, babycakes.”

“And you have a tendency toward the tacky. We've all got our little failings.”

“'Tacky' is an understatement,” Bog snorted, folding himself up to get through he door, “This places looks like somewhere my mom would go to get her hair dyed some unnatural color. Smells like someone crashed a truck of cheap cologne in here.”

“Lovely,” Roland said, exasperated, “More of the local primitives. Really, dearest, I used to credit you with better taste. Or is that even a local? Humans aren't usually so . . . so _pointy_.”

“Who is this guy?” Bog asked the Doctor, “Evil alien barber?”

“I'm her husband,” Roland said with a lift of his chin, trying to look down his nose as Bog despite the disparity in their heights.

“Her _what_?”

“ _Ex_ ,” the Doctor said darkly.

“Really?” Dawn asked, looking away from helping Sunny pick glass out of his hair, “I thought he was an impostor. What kind of argument did you guys have this time? Must have been really bad.”

“She really hasn't changed, has she?” Roland said, tilting his head toward Dawn, his tone hinting at some hidden significance in his words, “Why, you'd almost think she didn't even know that--”

“Obviously you wanted something,” the Doctor interrupted, “what is it?”

“Just catching up, buttercup. Seeing how you're doing, for old time's sake. Finding out if you've decided to stop being such an unpleasant grump. Possibly ask if you would be a darling and lend me that lovely Yectumial crystal your pointy goon is carrying in that box.”

“You'll have to ask my mother about that,” Bog said, deadpan.

“Oh, I'm sure she won't mind, so if you could just unwrap your claws from it and hand it over, that would be marvelous. After all,” Roland spun the mirror in his hands, “you all might be here awhile otherwise.”

The broken glass rose from the floor in a glittering cloud, flying back into the door frame and settling into it with a sharp crunching. The door was shut and whole again and this time the 'open' sign burst into flame and fell off the window.

Roland smashed the hand mirror on the arm of the styling chair, leaving him with a jagged edge of broken glass. The floor of the salon rippled and Sunny found himself slammed back against the front of the building along with Bog and the Doctor.

Dawn, however, pitched forward, right into the chair Roland had just gotten out of. She turned around, trying to get out of it, but straps lashed out and bound her feet and ankles to the chair. Roland nodded approvingly as Dawn struggled in vain, tapping his broken mirror gently against her neck.

“Now, buttercup,” He smiled at the Doctor as she picked herself off the floor, “I'm sure we can come to an understanding.”


	7. Chapter 7

“If you touch her I will kill you.”

“Darlin', we both know you just don't have that in you. Just ask your precious sister here, she'd tell us you would never do something so horrible. Your precious little sister who's sweet little head is in the clouds and far, far away from all those unpleasant little realities.”

“I'm _right here_ ,” Dawn complained.

“Hush, sweetheart,” Roland patted her hair, “The grownups are talking.”

“This really _can't_ be Roland,” Dawn said, jerking her head out from under his hand, “Roland is kind of full of himself sometimes but he's not deluded and he was never so patronizing. What is he? Shapeshifter? Android? Illusionist?”

“Kind of has a makeshift shiv at your neck,” Sunny reminded her, feeling the conversation was getting far too casual consider the circumstances.

“I know. It's just _rude_.”

“We'll get into that later,” the doctor said, “kind of have to prioritize right now.”

“Honestly, if you're going to patronize me too that's just too much.”

Bog was busy trying to kick the door in.

It seemed unfortunately solid.

“Would you stop your Neanderthal tree before he scratches the paint job?” Roland sighed, adjusting the cuffs of his crisp white dress shirt, then digging in his bright green waistcoat to pull out a pocket watch, “I give him two minutes before he breaks his toes.”

“Jokes on you, sunshine,” Bog gave the door one last kick out of spite, “these boots have steel toes. Come over here and I'll demonstrate.”

Roland shook his head, tapping the mirror near Dawn's neck again when it looked like the Doctor might try to move closer, “Really, dearest, I can unfortunately see why you picked this one up. He suits your new streak of ruthlessness very well. Now, the crystals, please.”

“What do you even want them for?” the Doctor took the box from Bog and tossed it from one hand to the other, “They're a curiosity, but not very valuable. Especially considering their quirk.”

“Now, now, don't go prying into my business affairs, darlin'. That's not your place.”

“Yet here I am, making myself comfortable,” the doctor shook the box, rattling the necklace inside, “asking all the uncomfortable questions.”

“Oh, _darlin_ ',” Roland shook his head, “if you're going to be like that I have a few questions that will make you far more uncomfortable than you could _ever_ make me. You see, I don't have any shame. You, on the other hand, just _reek_ with it. Think of all the interesting little tidbits I could tell your precious little sister. I'm sure she's just _dying_ to know what I'm talking about.”

The jagged edge of glass shone, moving closer to Dawn's neck.

“Lady,” Bog said, taking the box back from the Doctor, “you have lousy taste in men.”

“We were young,” She took the box back, “Different people. In a different world. Now, Roland, you want this?”

“You know it, honey.”

“Fine. You've got it.”

She opened the box and pulled out the necklace.

Sunny made a strangled noise of protest and found his ankle on the receiving end of the Doctor's boots. Which, like Bog's, had steel toes. Bog looked at her skeptically. She just stared back, daring him to comment.

“Here it is. Let her go and it's yours.”

Roland remained where he was.

“Not trying to pull anything clever?”

“You've got me over a barrel, as if I need to remind you of that.”

“Based on previous encounters you like to do a little more sermonizing before capitulating.”

“Previous encounters didn't have you holding my sister hostage! Now let her go!”

Roland snapped his fingers and the restraints unfastened from Dawn's hands and feet.

“Ugh, finally,” She jumped up, then grimaced when Roland grabbed her collar, broken mirror pressed to her neck.

“Not so fast, little sister. Crystals, please and thank you.”

The Doctor threw them at him.

He caught them and gave Dawn a push toward the group by the door.

“Now, that was painless, wasn't it?”

Sunny, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from talking, made a soft whimper of disagreement.

“Hm,” the Doctor said in vague disagreement, pushing Dawn behind her, putting out an arm to keep her from walking forward again, “Stay, please.”

“Ugh!” Dawn folded her arms and stepped back.

“One last thing,” the Doctor pulled a scalpel from her jacket pocket and held it up, letting the glare of the salon gleam off the metal.

“Really,” Roland jingled the necklace in his hand, “this is your backup plan?”

“More or less.”

In a flash the Doctor had grabbed Bog by the wrist and sliced the blade across his hand. He yanked free and automatically struck back at her, slamming the heel of his palm into her chin, making something in her jaw snap.

“Now, this is confusing,” Roland said, letting the necklace lay still in his hand, “I think you've got some part of your plan confused, because that big guy? I think he was on your side. FYI. And now he looks a little upset with you. Also FYI.”

“What are you two _doing_?” Dawn shoved Bog away and rushed to help her sister off the floor. Sunny helped her haul the Doctor up, really hoping that somebody had some sort of plan.

“She cut me!” Bog scrambled in his pocket for a handkerchief, but found none and had to make do with pressing his hand to his t-shirt, “I knew it! She's insane! Letting that thing out of the box, then slicing me open!”

“Guys?” Sunny pointed at the darkening doorway, “Possible small problem?”

“Whoa!” Dawn pulled away from the door, familiar black mist starting to eat its way inside, “How is that getting in here? It shouldn't be able to get inside a TARDIS!”

“Boosted the signal and made sure I had a crack left to broadcast through,” the Doctor carefully felt her jaw, her words slightly slurred. She spat out some blood, then turned to Roland, holding up a sliver of glass from the door, “Might need to get that hole plugged before the cold weather sets in. Nasty draft.”

“How is this helpful!” Sunny gestured at the smoke, “We're all going to die!”

“What is going on?” Roland asked, stepping carefully back behind a chair, “That looks messy.”

“It will destroy anything in its path,” the Doctor said, “and in a very nasty way, I imagine. You see, it's a security program. Well, part of a security program. Somehow it got corrupted. It was dormant and harmless until Sunny here got some blood on it and woke it up again. Seems that it took this as an attempt to hack its programming and got a little miffed about it.”

“But how do we stop it from killing us?” Sunny persisted.

“Before I kill anybody,” Bog growled, feeling blood soaking through his shirt.

“Simple,” the Doctor said, swiveling out of the way just before the smoke started to eat at the square of floor tile she had been standing on, “Return the crystals to the rightful owner and give it genetic material it recognizes.”

Dawn looked at Bog's blood hand and looked enlightened, “Oh!”

“Yes!” the Doctor flashed a broad smile at her sister, then pressed her hand to her jaw with a hiss, “That hurts. Smugness hurts. Make note of that. Now, Roland, you'd better give Bog back his necklace before things get even messier.”

Roland tossed it at Bog.

“I'll just take it back once the program is subdued!”

“What do I do?” Bog asked.

“Hold it in your bleeding hand. Now say out loud that we are all your friends and that _he_ ,” the Doctor pointed at Roland, “is _not_.”

The look of vague irritation snapped from Roland's face and his smooth features crumpled into a look of fury. Sunny was only a little shocked by it. He had seen many handsome faces turn ugly when the owner realized they had been beaten.

“Say it now!” the Doctor ordered, the smoke filling the room, the outer walls of the salon all but gone.

“These people are my friends except for that blond moron!”

Roland threw himself behind the reception desk, shoving the appointment book over to reveal a panel of buttons. He began to tap at them in a furious rhythm. The remaining walls of the salon shimmered and there was a sound something like what Sunny had heard before, in the other box. Time machine. Spaceship. Thing.

A gust of wind made them all cover their faces and when they looked up again they were standing in an empty corner lot. 

Both the salon and the dark cloud were gone.

The Doctor shoved the box at Bog, “Best put it back in the box for now. Glitchy programming isn't to be trusted.”

Bog looked at the blood-covered necklace in his hand, “You cut my hand open.”

“You cracked my jaw. I think I lost half a molar. Oh, and I saved all of our lives!'

“You don't think Roland would have really done anything like that?” Dawn had her arm around Sunny to help keep him upright, “If it was some sort of impostor I would say anything goes, but _Roland_?”

“Just take my word for it,” the Doctor snatched the necklace out of Bog's hand and dropped it back in the box.

Bog swore when the gems dragged across the cut.

“Where did the building go?” Sunny asked, still on the look out for traces of black smoke.

“It was a TARDIS,” Dawn explained, “He probably flew it into the time vortex to shake off the security program.”

“Why does my mom's ugly necklace have an evil security program?”

“Excellent question!” the Doctor said, trying out a small smile, “I have several theories but absolutely no facts. But we were wrong, it is not a Yectumial crystal at all.”

“Like I ever knew what that was,” Bog complained.

“Do try and keep up,” the Doctor slammed the box into Bog's chest hard enough to knock the breath out of him, “Let's get back to the TARDIS before our golden-haired friend gets back.”

“Your golden-haired _ex_ , apparently.”

“That's not relevant,” the Doctor was already striding back toward the park.

“I think it is!” Dawn objected, “When did you two even break up? Why didn't you tell me about it? I know I've been out of the loop—being in a time loop and everything—but I get a feeling that you're not telling me everything. More of a certainty, really. Rock-solid.”

“People change. I changed,” her sister said, walking faster, “and, please, priorities. A very powerful nanotech security program that's at least three hundred years old is bugging out. And for whatever reason it belongs to this individual with singularly fearsome eyebrows.”

“If I said you weren't my friend,” Bog glowered, “would this necklace eat you?”

“It would _try_.”

“That gives me some comfort.”

“And this all happened because it doesn't like me?” Sunny could probably had walked on his own but he didn't try to remove Dawn's arm from around his waist. Somehow the bizarre misadventure was almost worth it if Dawn was going to hug him indefinitely.

“It doesn't like anyone,” Dawn said, “Just like it's owner.”

Bog rolled his eyes at her.

“Apparently it's activated by certain genetic signatures. It didn't recognize yours, Sunny, so its reaction was hostile, assuming you were a thief or dangerous. It recognized Bog and basically gave him admin status.”

“ _Lovely_ ,” Bog rumbled, trying to unstick his bloody hand from his t-shirt.

“Oh, stop messing with it.”

The Doctor pulled herself to an abrupt stop, turning and snatching Bog's hand. He tried to pull away, the memory of the last time she grabbed his hand still fresh in hs mine.

“Don't be a child,” She rebuked him, peeling his t-shirt off the wound. She pulled a blue square out of her pocket and slapped it on the cut, “There. That will sanitize the cut and soothe the pain. So stop whining.”

There was a sharp sting that made Bog wince, but as promised a warmth emanated from the blue square, easing away the throbbing pain.

“Huh. You really are a doctor, then.”

“I've been saying. Now here's for being such an exemplary patient.”

She tucked a lollipop in his jacket pocket and turned on her heel.

“Hey, I want one!” Dawn called.

The Doctor tossed one over her shoulder without breaking her stride.

Dawn caught it, “Thanks!”

Bog looked at the lollipop sticking out of his pocket.

“Completely mad.”


	8. Chapter 8

“The question is: where did you family get this necklace?”

“Funny, I was thinking of asking more along the lines of where I could get a clean shirt, a cold beer, and a tablespoon of sanity. Do you think that as the admin of the glam medallion of death I could get it to bring me a beer?”

“Maybe,” the Doctor said absently, her attention on the pendent, “But it would probably scrub everything between here and the bar off the face of the planet.”

“Hmm,” Bog considered, “A tough call.”

“I can help with the shirt, Boggy,” Dawn presented him with a clean t-shirt.

Bog unfolded and held it up.

It said “DON'T PANIC” in large red letters.

“How appropriate.”

“Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,” Sunny nodded approvingly, “Nice.”

“You should try my pangalactic gargleblaster sometime,” Dawn swung over the railing, feet landing in front of the console, “but don't try my sister's. Hers is like being hit with a brick wrapped in a wedge of lemon.”

“A drink has to have a little kick!”

“It doesn't have to _literally_ knock your socks off.”

The Doctor snorted, but refrained from continuing the discussion, busy running her sonic screwdriver over the necklace, “Hard to pinpoint the age of it. You say it used to be one rock?”

“Yeah, got cut up a hundred years ago and made into that necklace.”

“Hm. That certainly wouldn't have helped the integrity of the security program. It's hard to say what it was supposed to be protecting. These rocks could have held data, history, or had some sort of function. Like generating a forcefield around the wearer. Definitely non-terrestrial.”

“No doubt,” Dawn put on her glasses and leaned in to look at the bloody gems, “Which makes it unlikely it would recognize the genetic signature of any terrestrial lifeforms.”

“I'm from Scotland, not Jupiter!”

“Is the necklace from Scotland as well?” Dawn asked, straightening up and taking off her glasses.

“No. It's from my mom's side of the family. They're German-Jewish.”

“Lots of nice forests in Germany,” the Doctor remarked, “Wouldn't expect to find Cheem outside of rain forest environments, but adaptation and mutation do happen . . .”

Bog turned his back to her and shrugged off his leather jacket before turning his attention to removing his blood-stained t-shirt. He was just pulling it over his head when the Doctor shouted, “He really is a tree!”, and Bog got so startled he got tangled up and briefly trapped.

He ripped off the shirt and threw it on the floor, “Look, you wee madwoman--!”

“I'm pretty sure those are tattoos,” Dawn said, patting her sister gently on the shoulder.

“I knew that,” the Doctor bent quickly over the necklace again. Then looked up again, “Did you design those tattoos?”

Bog pulled on the clean shirt and glanced down at the sleeves of plant tattoos that covered from arms from shoulders to wrists. There was more ink on his back, but those were still in progress, unlike the sleeves, which had been completed several years ago.

“Yeah, I did. Why?”

“Huh. Interesting.”

She bent back over the necklace.

“You a tattoo artist, too?” Sunny asked.

“Nah. I worked out the designs and my friend Gary did the inking. We have a deal: I don't try to do my own tattoos and he doesn't come to my gigs and try to sing.”

“Hah. Yeah, um, about your gigs . . . do they always end like it did last night?”

“Ugh,” Bog leaned on the railing, cradling his head in his hands, “I have to explain to my mother why most of my paycheck is going to go towards paying off my bail. No. Usually nobody gets arrested. And if you're worried about me getting into drunken brawls you can just skip drinks. I'm sure most everyone would be glad to join you at some less perilous venue.”

“Er, okay. I mean, you guys really have a great sound going on and it was a blast to perform with you, but I don't think I really fit your style. And they already have you as a vocalist and lead guitar, so . . .”

“Eh, no. We switch the genres around. It keeps us flexible and we're a motley group to begin with. When we're not doing rock I usually play backup. We do a lot of hip hop and pop, depending on which band members shout the loudest that week.”

“Oh. Cool!”

“You sing?” Dawn leaned on the console, blue eyes looking eagerly at Sunny, “ _and_ play the guitar? That's amazing!”

“There's a strict No Flirting policy aboard the TARDIS,” the doctor said under her breath, have screwed a jeweler's magnifier into her eye to inspect the gems more closely, “Don't get attached. We're just passing through and Sunny here is going to go home and do whatever he does when he's not flirting with you.”

Sunny’s face went hot with embarrassment.

Dawn stuck her tongue out at her sister, “Killjoy.”

“Airhead.”

“Grouch.”

“Manic pixie.”

“Hee. I love you.”

“Hm. Get the chronometer, would you? No, just under your elbow, in that slot—thank you.”

A small square device was produced and held over the gems. A reading flashed on the square's small screen and the sisters frowned at it.

“It's hard to get a fix on the age of the gems,” Dawn said, shaking the device and holding it over the necklace again, “Because it's a rock. It just wants to tell us how old the rock is when we want to know when it was mined. And the chronometer is saying _that_ was just about a thousand years ago.”

“Wow. Even my Aunt Aura never claimed it was _that_ old.”

“How did the stone come to be in your family's possession.”

“I forget,” Bog shrugged,” Aunt Aura has a thousand stories, all of them cracked.”

Dawn shook the chronometer again, holding it up and pointing it at her sister, trying to get a better look at the screen. The Doctor shoved it away.

“We should talk to this aunt of yours.”

“No. Like my day hasn't been bad enough! I don't need to top if off by going to talk to barmy Aunt Aura.”

“Man up, marsh man, this is for science.”

“And also to make sure a deadly swarm of nanomachines won't be unleashed on humanity,” Dawn added, frowning at the chronometer again.

“Yes, that too, I suppose. Just ignore that,” the Doctor snatched the device and tossed it away, “It needs to be recalibrated. Now, about this Aunt Aura . . .”

* * *

 

“Broden, sweetie! How lovely to see you!”

Bog leaned away from the embrace of the tiny, glittering woman.

“Hello, Aunt Aura.”

“I haven't seen you since last Christmas, young man! Have you found yourself a nice girl yet? Oh, never mind, I know you haven't. Griselda keeps me updated. Unless there's been some breaking news that hasn't caught up to me yet?”

A woman of indeterminate age peered around Bog to look over the two woman standing behind him. She glanced over Dawn but gave an barely imperceptible shake of her head when she encountered sparkling blue eyes and a sunny demeanor. When her gaze fell on the Doctor Aura brightened and gave a tiny nod of approval at the dark woman's ill-tempered slouch and tightly folded arms.

“Broden, introduce me to your friends!”

“They aren't my--” Bog cut himself off when the Doctor jabbed him in the kidney and he quickly corrected himself, “Ah, yes. My friends. These are my friends. Who I am friends with. Unfortunately.”

“Totally friends,” Sunny agreed quickly.

“Yes, we are,” the Doctor said, glaring at the box holding the necklace, “We are all friends here, my friend.”

“This is Sunny,” Bog said, defeated, “met him through the band. These are _his_ friends, Dawn and . . . her sister.”

“Jane,” the Doctor said, refolding her arms, “Dawn and Jane Smith.”

“Lovely to meet you!” Aura came forward, hands held out toward 'Jane'.

The Doctor looked down at the hands, glittering with rings and bracelets, and did not bother to hide her distaste at the sight of them, “I don't hug.”

Far from slighted, Aura looked delighted, “Oh, you and Broden both, dear! Now, come in, come in! Keep an old lady company for awhile.”

Bog had never been sure how old Aura was, but he was fairly sure she was not actually old. Her face had very few lines and while her hair was practically white he was fairly sure that was a result of bleach and not age. If there were other signs of age Bog found it hard to spy any through the glitter of her jewelry and flashy color of her outfits.

The interior of the house reflected its inhabitant: bright and garish. New age crystals were scattered artlessly around and prisms hung from the ceiling, both alone and grouped in mobiles. A beaded curtain hung in the entryway, nearly entangling the Doctor when she tried to sidle through it without actually touching the blue crystals it was made of.

“What sort of Venusian magpie's nest is this?” She hissed while Bog helped her free herself, “I'm going to go blind from sheer tackiness.”

“It's her house, she can decorate it how she wants.”

“Not if she expects visitors to survive!”

“What a lovely home!” Dawn said, putting on her glasses to look at the prisms swinging over the living room couch, “It expresses your unique personality so beautifully.”

“Thank you, dear! Now, I have granola bars and date cookies, if anyone is interested?”

“Oh, yes, please!” Dawn said, “Love a good granola bar. Excellent for the digestion. Who doesn't love a good granola bar?”

“Heh, yeah,” Sunny agreed automatically.

Both Bog and the Doctor deliberately did not comment.

There was a whistling noise and Bog glanced down to see the Doctor pointing her sonic screwdriver at Aura's back. He smacked the screwdriver away.

“Leave off! What are you doing to my aunt?”

“It's just a scan!”

“I don't care. Don't be all techno-alien in front of her. She already believes in pixies and goblins, I don't want her on an ET kick too.”

“Did you say something, dears?” Aura asked, putting down a plate of snacks on the coffee table.

“Nothing!” the doctor hide her screwdriver behind her back, “Just commenting on the . . . weather. Cool. And dry.”

“Yes, it has been a little bit. Now, Jane, sit down here by me and tell me all about yourself. From what I see you have very clouded chakra. Are you getting anything done about that?”

“Er. Increasing my whole grains?”

Aura went off into peals of laughter, “Oh, I like you already, dear. Remind me to give you some crystals before you go. I have just the thing--”

“Speaking of gems!” the Doctor said, loudly enough to make Sunny drop the granola bar he was gnawing on, “Bog was showing us his mothers very interesting necklace and telling us about its very interesting history. He said you would know more.”

“Oh, the primrose pendent? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that, it's got an absolutely fascinating history. According to the stories that have been passed down in the family the gems are at least six hundred years old!”

“So, fourteen, fifteen century Germany? Amazing that a Jewish family managed to obtain and keep something so valuable in that time.”

“Oh, the King family has always been an exceptional one in many ways,” Aura said with a little laugh and a wave of her hand.

“I don't doubt it,” the Doctor said, scooting as far away from Aura as the couch would allow, “Seeing as they've got at least one Cheem tucked away in the family tree—pun intended.”

“Listen--!” Bog snapped.

“But, of course,” the Doctor continued with a certain amount of smugness, as if she were being exceedingly clever and waiting for everyone to notice, “you already knew that, Aunt Aura.”


	9. Chapter 9

It was Bog's opinion—an opinion shared by most of his extended family—that Aunt Aura Plum wasn't playing with a full deck of cards.

She lived in a little cottage tucked away between two office buildings, having refused to sell when the area was developed. So her quaint little home, with honeysuckle climbing the walls, sat on a patch of grass in the middle of a flat, gray plane of concrete, oblivious to the onward march of progress going on around it. Ever since he was a kid Bog had always found the cottage unnerving, like he'd stepped out of reality into some new age fairy tale setting.

The yard was given over to plants in a sort of ordered chaos. The different plants were not constrained to squares or rows, but grew freely and mingled with their neighbors in uneven splashes of leaves and blossoms. Yet Aunt Aura knew exactly where everything was and took great care that plants that 'weren't friendly with each other' stayed a safe distance apart.

Inside the house, like walking into the crystal interior of a geode with all the crystals and prisms, revealed further plant specimens in pots and vases, these of a more exotic variety. Bog's knowledge of plants was fairly extensive, but the sprouts and cuttings Aunt Aura nurtured in her tiny greenhouse attached to the side of the cottage were beyond him. He had always been under the impression that they were types of rare orchids and didn't try to meddle with them. Even after years of helping Aunt Aura tend her garden Bog still knew hardly anything about her greenhouse 'specials'.

Bog strongly suspected there might be some marijuana growing in there. He was careful not to ask. In fact, he tried to avoid the cottage altogether, but somehow his mother always managed to finagle him into going over and helping Aura with the heavier garden work. Not that he wasn't sort of fond of his barmy aunt, it was just hard to endure her for more than five minutes at a time.

So it was a protectiveness of familial connections that riled his temper when the Doctor started putting on those know-it-all airs of hers, acting like she knew everything there was to know about Aunt Aura.

“Dear,” Aura laughed at the Doctor's assertions, “I haven't the faintest idea what you mean.”

“Hey, _Jane_ ,” Bog hissed, “Could I have a word with you outside?”

The Doctor ignored him, standing up and taking the attitude of a lecturing professor, one hand on her hip, pushing back her jacket, the other hand free to gesture and point.

“First of all, you've got a nicely varied collection of alien plants growing outside your house. Mostly harmless, very decorative, a few medicinal. But that specimen you have on the mantel is . . . class, do you know?”

Dawn's hand shot up into the air, “A Bombaxian Death Violet!”

“Yes, excellent,” the Doctor paced over to the window, “and this fetching vine you have trained over this window is the Strangling Love Knot from Melain.”

“Actually rather friendly, despite the name,” Dawn put in, “if a bit clingy.”

“Is there a point to this?” Bog asked through gritted teeth, trying to think of how to extract the Doctor without causing even more of a scene.

“And I imagine whatever you have tucked away in your greenhouse is even more interesting then these little trifles you have out here. The _point_ is that these plants need very special care and food. It is unlikely in the extreme that you, Aunt Aura, don't know they are alien.”

The Doctor took a victorious bite of date cookie.

She spit the bite out into a napkin, gagging.

“Gack! Should've tried a nibble of the death violet instead.”

“Not to mention,” Dawn pushed herself off her seat and crossed over to a shelf crammed with books, crystals, trowels, and gardening gloves, “Your nifty little lab.”

She grabbed at trowel that turned out to be attached to the shelf and come forward like a lever. The coffee table shifted and Bog moved his feet away from it as the table rose up into the ceiling, revealing a hole in the floor, a set of stairs leading down into it.

“There's a certain whiff of chemicals,” Dawn explained, “and rubber gloves. Also, you left a receipt for a shipment of beakers and petri dishes sitting on the sideboard by your front door.”

“My, my,” Aura said, her voice only slightly faint, “Aren't you two such clever girls! What have you been telling them, Broden?”

“Uh, I thought you grew weed, actually.”

“Oh, dear,” Aura shook her head, “I had rather thought you were sharper than that, dear.”

“Don't fault him for not seeing through the perception filter over this place,” the Doctor hopped into the hole and began to descend the stairs, “You've got Daydream Lilies all along the edge of this property. Organic filter.”

“I do hate unnecessary machines about the place,” Aura sighed, “Please don't touch anything down there, dears, it isn't safe without gloves.”

Bog leaned over the hole, seeing the sterile white of a lab below, “Is this some sort of meth operation?”

“Please, ladies!” Aura called down, “Come up out of there! Broden, would you please get your friends out of there!”

“They aren't my friends.”

“Yes we are!” the sisters shouted in unison from below.

“Yes, yes, sorry! You're my friends! But only due to extenuating circumstances!”

“So,” Sunny said, trying to be casual, “you're like . . . a mad scientist with a witch aesthetic?”

Aura giggled, pleased with this description, “Yes, that's about the sum of it. They used to call me a witch, once upon a time, when this area was more trees than concrete. But progress isn't all bad. Greenhouses and climate controlled environments are so helpful to my work.”

“Which is?” Bog prompted, feeling he was owed and explanation.

“Potions!” Dawn popped out of the hole like a jack-in-the box, waving a small bottle, “Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf! Witches' mummy; maw and gulf, of the ravin'd salt-sea shark!”

“Root of hemlock,” the Doctor said, voice echoing from below, “digged I the dark.”

“Medicinal extracts!” Aura snatched the bottle, “Of the highest quality!”

“Also illegal,” the doctor walked back up the stairs, an open bottle in her hand. She dipped her pinky in it and brought it to her lips for a taste. She made a face. “This is a class five planet and trafficking of non-native plants and their extracts is banned.”

Aura stared at the Doctor, “Dear, you do know that is a bottle of Weeping Snapdragon, yes? As in, the deadly poison?”

“And it's gone off. You shouldn't refrigerate it, you know.”

“Never mind,” Dawn said, “It's harmless to our physiology. And yours.”

“And his,” the Doctor dipped her index finger in the bottle, then wiped her finger along the back of Bog's hand, “Your playmate probably shouldn't touch it, though, Dawn.”

“What is wrong with you?!” Bog scrubbed his hand against his jeans.

“You're fine. It gives you all sorts of vitamins. To any earth-based lifeforms, however . . .”

With a flourish, Dawn tore a leaf off of a potted marigold and presented it to her sister.

The Doctor dipped the leaf into the liquid and held it up so everyone could see the leaf wither and yellow.

Aura took the vial back with a small 'hm!' of impatience.

“I cater to transplants from across the universe who have made their homes here,” Aura said with great dignity, “And unless you have proof of some sort of authority then I don't see how any of this is your business. And stop dribbling chemicals on Broden! There are so many generations between him and our roots, his physiology is probably almost entirely human!”

“Almost entirely?” Bog repeated.

“ _Please_. He is so obviously a throwback. You can't have missed that, Aunt Aura.”

“ _Look_ ,” Bog grabbed the lapel of the Doctor's coat and pulled her away from Aura, “We came here to find out about the necklace, not do some sort of intergalactic drug bust! And I am really sick of the bee you have in your bonnet about me being some sort of tree alien!

“Your hand.”

“I just wanted my guitar and the necklace back! I did not want to get caught up in your messy divorce with that pompadoured peabrain, or to find out that my aunt is apparently dealing in alien drugs! Find out what you need to know, fix the necklace, then fly off to wherever it is that Time Lords live when they aren't annoying me!”

“Your _hand_ ,” the Doctor tapped the hand Bog had clenched around the lapel of her jacket.

Bog looked down.

One the back of his hand, where the Doctor had smeared the chemical from Aura's lab, was a tiny green sprout growing out of his skin.

“Lots of good vitamins in Weeping Snapdragon extract,” the Doctor said with a smirk, “encourages growth.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Wait, so Bog is a plant now?”

There had been a lot of shouting inside the cozy little cottage and Sunny was beginning to feel very out of place and unnecessary. After Bog threw a chair Sunny had just about decided to bail and look elsewhere for a band to play with.

Then Dawn took Sunny's hand.

“Hey,” she gave his arm a tug, “I think these proceedings can do without us.”

Outside in the wild garden, Sunny tried to get himself up to speed on recent events, nervously eying the plants in case one was Martian Strangler or death orchid from Pluto or something.

“Not a plant-plant,” Dawn bent over a plant and sniffed it, “Mmm, mint. He's just got some plant ancestry. Well, his ancestor was an alien that evolved from plants. Seems he inherited a bit more of that than the rest of his family.”

“I've been hanging out with a violent . . . tree? No one is ever going to believe it when I tell them about today. Oh! Oh, no! I had work this morning! And this afternoon! And I haven't called my mom to let her know I'm not dead in a ditch somewhere--”

“Call your job.”

“Wha--?”

“Call your job and ask to speak to Sunny.”

Obediently, Sunny pulled out his phone and called work, “Hi, is, um . . . can I talk to Sunny?”

“Yeah, one second!” The afternoon manager said. There was the shuffling sound of a phone changing hands and a new voice said, “This is Sunny!”

Sunny dropped his phone.

Dawn caught it and put it on speaker.

“Hi, Sunny, this is Dawn!”

“Oh, is that you from earlier?” Sunny on the other end of the phone asked, “Well, earlier for me, though it's the same time right now . . .”

“Yup! Just reminding earlier-you that we have a time machine and he won't have to miss any of his shifts or let his mom worry. We'll just back up a bit and--”

“Yeah, I remember!” the Sunny on the phone broke in with a laugh, “I was there! But I should warn you guys--”

“No messing with the time-line! Bye bye!”

She hung up and gave the phone back to Sunny, “You'll be on the other end of that phone call in a few hours of your personal time-line.”

“Hah,” Sunny looked at his phone, “There are two of me running around right now?”

“Same you, just from two different points in the time stream.”

“I guess it's nice to know I survive today.”

“Did you ever have any doubt? I'm hurt!” Dawn booped Sunny's nose, “Now you need to buy me coffee to make up for it.”

“You just had coffee. You're the only one who had coffee, actually.”

“Then you'll have to buy me some tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow?” Sunny felt his face lighting up, “Tomorrow as in after all this is over? Tomorrow like a—a--”

“Date?”

* * *

 

“Date cookie?”

Aura offered Bog the tray of cookies, her manner sarcastically polite.

Looking around at the wreckage of the living room, Bog couldn't really blame her.

The moment he had seen the sprout on his hand Bog had dropped the Doctor and made a noise that might have involved some obscenities, but they all got mangled up when he tried to scream at the same time.

The Doctor picked up the essence of what he was trying to communicate and said, “I didn't do anything to you. That's just a sample of how you really are. Calm down, it's just like hair or fingernails, you can just clip that off. Nip it in the bud. Or has it grown on you?”

At that point Bog remembered kicking over a chair.

“This is a great time to remember, time lady, that I could tell a cloud of death smoke to eat you!”

“And destroy this budding friendship?”

Bog had then _thrown_ a chair.

When the shouting died down the couch was flipped over and crystals were smashed all over the floor. Bog slumped down in one of the few chairs he hadn't overturned in his attempts to corner the Doctor and wrap his hands around her throat.

He pointed at his sprouting hand, “ _Fix this_.”

“There isn't anything to fix,” Aura snapped the sprout off at the base.

“Ow!”

“Hm, didn't expect that to have developed nerve endings. Must've gone too close to the root. Sorry, dear.”

A dot of blood welled up on the back of Bog's hand. He dabbed it away with a napkin Aunt Aura handed him and inspected the damage. A streak of skin across the back of his hand was looking . . . a little dry. Somewhat like bark. The beginning of other sprouts budded at the edge of the bark-ish area. The sight made Bog's stomach flip uneasily.

“A little moisturizer and you'll be fine,” the Doctor said, standing behind the overturned couch, well away from Bog, “I was just proving a point.”

“And what might that be?” Aura snapped, “This wasn't something Broden needed to know! His family hasn't known for three generations now! They've all been getting along perfectly fine.”

“With you checking in on them, playing puppet-master behind the scenes?”

“Nonsense!” Aura sniffed, “All I do is make sure that if any throwbacks come along they don't get outed. And the primrose pendent takes care of the bulk of that, so really I just make sure no one starts getting leafy and they all get the nutrients they can't get in a normal human diet.”

“Is that why you always fed us those awful smoothies?”

“Hush, Broden, you always said you loved them.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“The pendent?” the Doctor asked, “It has a perception filter?”

“No, it keeps their genetic framework stable and within human parameters. Which means your hand should be fine in a day or too, Broden. I used to have to travel around and make sure all the Kings had contact with the primrose, but nowadays with all this technology I can boost the signal through satellites and cover most of the planet. I still lend it out every generation or so to make sure it makes the rounds through the family.”

“Are you telling me,” Bog wrapped the napkin around his hand so he didn't have to look at the buds, “That if it weren't for that necklace I'd be a ruddy _tree_?”

“A bit? Hard to say without removing the genetic scaffolding that keeps you . . . well . . .”

“Human,” the Doctor finished for her, “Now, this pendent keeps everyone looking pretty, but also has a nanotech security system?”

“No, no, it doesn't,” Aura shook her head, “it's just what a said it was.”

“Not according to what I've seen.”

“Oh, dear,” Aura took the pendent out of its box, “they really never should have cut it up.”

* * *

 

 The thought of going on a date with Dawn had Sunny's vision so blurred with rosy pink that it took him twenty minutes to actually ask why he was helping her dig around in storage boxes in the TARDIS.

“I'm looking for family photos. Holograms. Film. Anything. I just realized today that I haven't seen one single picture of our family since my sister and I went on vacation.”

“Is this because of what that Roland guy was going on? About secrets and stuff?”

“Saying I had my head in the clouds!” Dawn slammed a box down and started to rifle through its contents, “As if I hadn't a clue!”

“He seems like a real piece of work.”

“That's another thing!” Dawn flipped the box over, scattering odds and ends over the floor, “That was not Roland! I know Roland and he's a sweetheart. My sister isn't an idiot, she wouldn't marry some loser like that. I was a bridesmaid at their wedding! I was _right there_ and I could _see_ that they were really, really in love. They had been sweethearts since we were all kids and got married in a rush right before the war broke out in earnest.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Roland was in the army, you see. Nobody important yet, but he had aspirations. Then I wake up, the war is over, my sister is—is _different_ , and suddenly we're hurtling around the universe in a stolen TARDIS.”

“You say she's different, and that you're twins, that she changed. What do you mean, exactly? She acts different?”

“Oh, _yes_. You see—oh! Here, look at this!”

Dawn had found a Polaroid snapshot and handed it to Sunny.

There were two Dawns in the picture.

Both with the same blue eyes, fluffy hair, and cheerful faces.

“I don't get it?”

“That's me,” Dawn pointed to the Dawn on the right, who was wearing a blue dress, “And that's my sister,” she pointed at the Dawn on the left, this one wearing a pink dress.

“Uh?”

“She regenerated, you see. When a Time Lord is hurt, or very old, we don't die. We regenerate. New face, new body, new brain.”

“That means, you sister . . .?”

“She died. In the war. When she woke me up she was twenty years older than she had been and she . . . she wasn't my sister anymore. Not like she was.”

“Wow. That's . . . that's terrible. I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine—I'm so sorry.”

Sunny put his hand on Dawn's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.

“But I don't even think any of it's true,” Dawn took the picture back, touching the image of her sister, “She did something. She did something so that I can't remember her name.”

* * *

 

“I've only been the guardian for the last three hundred years, give or take a few decades. Family legend says the stone was cut up about a hundred years ago, but it was really four hundred years ago. The gems have been re-cut and reset multiple times since then. Four hundred years ago there was a bit of a disturbance, nothing that anybody really remembers, but it caused a terrible ruckus at the time.”

“Time War,” the Doctor muttered, “When all of time is your battleground then the consequences can be far reaching. Both forward and backward.”

“Anyway, the guardian at the time lost track of the stone and by the time it was retreived it had been cut up. We lost a lot of history with it and we've been trying to patch together the pieces ever since.”

“You're three hundred years old?” Bog asked, his voice flat with disbelief.

“Broden, dear, haven't you ever wondered how I'm related to you?”

“You're my aunt.”

“Which side of the family? Am I your mother's sister? A cousin?”

“Uh . . . what the devil.” He had never even thought about it. Aunt Aura was just sort of _there_. Kooky and giggling, forcing her health smoothies and date cookies on the family year after year.

“Never mind, dear. A touch of Daydream Lily perfume and nobody asks too many questions. I followed the family over from Germany to Scotland and America. Our family certainly likes to get around! In fact, your father and your mother are from different branches of the family--”

“Hah!” the Doctor laughed explosively, “Branches!”

“I sacrifice a little humanity in exchange for longevity,” Aura pushed her baggy sleeves up, revealing her arms were covered with knotted gray bark, “Trees live a long time, you know. I was actually going to approach you about being my successor, Broden, when you were a little older.”

“ _Fantastic_.”

“It's nice to see family traditions taking root,” the Doctor remarked.

“I'm going to kill that woman,” Bog growled, peeling off the napkin and taking another look at this hand.

As if he wasn't enough of a freak before, now he was really starting to blossom.

Drat, that woman's puns were catching.


	11. Chapter 11

Every time Bog thought he had figured out who he was, something happened to show him he was completely wrong.

He was an aspiring musician, ready to take the world of rock and roll by storm. Young and invincible, the future rolling front of him like a red carpet.

Then his father died and he and his mother were struggling to make ends meet.

And the found out that he was not invincible, that life was capable of hurting him cruelly. That all his aspirations, his potential, they meant nothing if they couldn't provide enough cash to pay the bills.

They lost the house.

Bog joined up for the steady paycheck and military housing for his mom.

He was down, but not out. Once he served his time he'd come out prepared for a better class of job that came with a better size paycheck. He still had his guitar, his dreams, and Ellie.

Ellie, who had met in one of those many temporary jobs he had taken in the desperate struggle to save the house. The house his dad had built for his mom. And Ellie had been there, a curtain of shining black hair falling down her back, a beautiful smile, and a kind way of listening. She joked that she was a good listener because her ears were so big. And they were, they stuck out on either side of her head and her younger brother called her 'Radar'. Bog thought her ears were adorable.

He played guitar, she played the electric violin, and in-between shifts at coffee shops and supermarkets they played together and built new dreams together.

By the time Bog joined up there was an engagement ring on Ellie's finger.

Bog never could quite believe that an ugly guy like him ever got so lucky.

He was invincible again.

Then he came back home, honorable discharge and commendations.

And something inside of him was broken.

He tried to be the person he was before. He smile and looked at apartments with Ellie, talked about their future, applied to jobs. Kept his feet on the ground, looked straight ahead and never back. He clung to the surface of his old world, but he no longer belonged in it, no longer fit.

And he was angry.

Over stupid, little things.

Every time someone deviated from the careful script he followed he got mad. Every time something wasn't perfect he flipped.

Every time he was sorry afterward for losing his temper, for saying the things he had said. But apologies didn't erase the scars his words cut into the people he loved. They didn't stop Ellie's eyes from filling with sadness.

Finally, as he somehow knew was inevitable, he went too far.

A diamond ring was pressed into his hand and he was hurtling off into the stars without direction.

It had taken him years to pull himself back to earth, to rebuild a little bit of a world for himself.

Now this woman, this doctor, came along and smashed it all to bits just to prove a point.

Now, apparently he was part tree.

“Now, I wonder,” the Doctor was sitting on the upturned couch, dipping a granola bar in a vial from the lab, “I wonder what Roland wants with the pendent. It's not much good to anybody outside the family. And it's absolutely ancient. Modern technology is far more convenient.”

She popped a bit of granola in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

“You owe me for five ounces of hemlock extract, dear,” Aura said, knocking the Doctor's boots with a broom, trying to sweep the crystals out from under the edge of the rug.

“Is that what this is?” the Doctor asked with her mouth full, turning the vial around to look at the label, “Thought it was really running icing.”

“I have a customer who likes it sweet. Jane—is that your name?—where exactly are you from?”

“Here and there,” the Doctor waved her granola bar in a vague circle.

“She's got a box she says is a spaceship,” Bog said, picking at his hand.

“And time machine,” the Doctor said automatically, eyes focused toward the ceiling as she thought.

Aura dropped the broom.

“Time machine?”

“Yeah,” Bog looked up, “apparently she's a 'Time Lord'. Whatever that is aside from pretentious.”

If Aura were still holding the broom she would have dropped it again.

“Why?” Bog asked suspiciously, “Do you know something, Aunt Aura?”

“I just . . . well everyone knows . . . we heard . . .” Aura was kneeling on the floor, picking up the larger pieces of crystal, “There aren't any . . . the Time Lords are gone.”

“Nothing is ever completely gone,” the Doctor shrugged.

“But there was a timelock. Them, their planet, the daleks, all sealed off. Every last one of them. The only one--”

“It isn't important,” the Doctor got off the couch and picked the box and necklace off the coffee table. The coffee table which had come down from the ceiling and now rested back over the entrance to the lab, “These are what's important right now.”

“The only one that got out was the one that sealed them all in.”

“That's one story. Now let's talk more about the story of the primrose. It used to be one stone? What did that stone look like?”

“It was—it was pink. About six inches long, I believe, and shaped like a seed, tapering down smaller at one end.”

“And it was completely pink? Not marbled or streaked?”

“No, entirely pink. Translucent. I'm told it was completely flawless.”

“Entirely pink?”

“Yeah,” Bog rewrapped his hand, “I think we established that.”

“It's just, if the original stone was pink, flawless pink, then what's this?” the Doctor held up the pendent, pointing to the yellow stone that sat at the center of the pink gems, “And what does it do?”

 

* * *

 

 

“How can she just make you forget her name?”

“Time Lords are a bit telepathic. Right now the TARDIS is translating everything you hear into English through telepathy. It's not that difficult to make someone forget, if they're not expecting you to be digging around.”

“Ah,”

“No, silly, I can't read your mind!” Dawn threw a rubberband ball at Sunny's head, “I'd have to be really trying and you'd notice, believe me! If you were mentally broadcasting I could pick you up, but you don't. Humans aren't usually very inclined to it.”

“You guys are immortal, change faces, read minds, travel through time . . . is there anything you _don't_ do? Because I'm starting to feel a little inferior over here, being a lowly human and all.”

“I can't play the guitar. I can sing, but I so much as touch any sort of instrument I end up making the most distressing noises. My sister despairs.”

“Oh, good. That makes me feel better.”

“Making people feel better is another Time Lord ability.”

Sunny threw the rubberband ball back at her, “Then how do you explain your sister? She has the bedside manner like a swift kick to the pants!”

“I can't deny that. She was always more blunt than me, but now she's just _terrible_. Oh, a photo album!” Dawn pulled the album out of a box, blowing a generous layer of dust off the cover before flipping it open. “Hm. These were all taken after her regeneration. Hey! When did she meet the Marx Brothers?! Why was I not invited? This is outrageous!”

“Are you serious? All of them? Let me see!”

“She's wearing Harpo's hat! I'm going to kill her!” Dawn handed over the photograph in question and began to flip through the album, “Huh, these were all taken a long time ago, judging by the dust and chemicals.”

“How can you tell? She could have done it yesterday. This is a _time_ machine.”

“The chronology inside the TARDIS is linear. If she did this yesterday then they would still be new. Unless she stored them too near the engines, but this room is shielded and stable. These are at least fifty years old.”

Dawn dropped the album back in the box.

“She said it had only been twenty years.”

 

* * *

 

 

“You're saying someone put that yellow stone in there when it was cut up? Okay, sure, why not,” Bog followed the Doctor as she walked briskly out of the cottage and through the yard, “But it might just be, you know, a rock? Whoever cut up the pink stone thought they'd put in a nice yellow one to make it a flower.”

“Or it was meant to do something. Interfere with the original purpose of the gems, augment it, hijack it. I don't know! I've got tools back at the TARDIS to check.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever. What's this about there not actually being any Time Lords left?”

Right on their way out the door Aura had pulled Bog back for a moment to give him a baggy of smoothie mix, “You'll probably need a boost. And try not to drink for the next week or two. It's bad for plants. Also, don't trust her.”

“Yeah, not gonna. Why?”

“If she's the last one, then she's the one who ended the Time War.”

“That's . . . bad?”

“Daleks are made to destroy, they do nothing else and can't be stopped. Time Lords are almost as bad. If she ended the war she did something terrible to do that. She's dangerous. Get the primrose fixed then get away from her.”

The Doctor was lost among the stars, nothing to tie her down.

A person like that was capable of almost anything.

“Obviously there are Time Lords left,” the Doctor replied, quickening her pace, “You've met three of them now. The universe is a big place. Rumors travel faster than facts.”

“Right. And what are the facts?”

“The fact is you are a descendant of a race of tree aliens, Broden Broderick King. A rich and noble lineage which you should not be ashamed of. I've meet trees of Cheem from time to time. Nice enough people. Met a representative of Cheem once. Jabe. Also one of the cleverest, kindest, bravest people I'd ever met. And I don't think she was exceptional for her species.”

“Are you,” Bog frowned, tried to sort out what the Doctor was saying, “Are you actually trying to be _nice_ to me?”

“I'm just talking facts. You just found out you’re part of something bigger than this planet. You should know that's not a bad thing.”

“Is this your way of apologizing?”

“What would I be apologizing for?”

Bog silently held up his wrapped hand.

“That was to gather data. Had to be done.”

“I think you _are_ trying to apologize. But you're absolute rubbish at it.”

“If I apologized—and I am not—it would be a thing of poetry and beauty beyond your imagining, marsh man.”

“Apology accepted, wee mad time lady.”

“Ugh!”

The Doctor began to walk faster, trying to outdistance Bog.

He easily caught up, thanks to his natural advantage of far longer legs.

“Does you sister know about your planet? That it's gone?”

“Rumors.”

“Please, if it wasn't gone you would have gone into a lecture about how it was still there and everyone else was too stupid to see it. You're protecting her, aren't you? She doesn't know.”

The Doctor bent her head, hands shoved into her pockets. When she spoke her voice was heavy.

“Don't tell her.”

“You can't just--”

“I'm waiting for a good time! This is none of your business so take your long nose elsewhere and keep your mouth _shut_.”

“You're pretty big on privacy for someone who just trampled all over my personal life!”

“There's a smoke cloud of death involved, this is no time for niceties.”

“You've got an answer for everything, haven't you?”

They were approaching the TARDIS, which was parked just down the block in an alley. The Doctor pushed open the door and found herself face-to-face with a furious Dawn who was carrying a stack of photo albums.

“I want an explanation!”

The Doctor looked at the albums and went pale.

“In answer to your question, Bog,” she said, “not quite _everything_.”


	12. Chapter 12

“How long? How long has it _really_ been?”

Dawn slammed the albums down on a stack of books by her sister's blackboard.

“How long between when I was stuck in that time loop and when you pulled me out? And before you even _think_ you can get away with lying to me again, please take into account that I have been all through your souvenir rooms and found evidence that tells me _not only_ has it been _far_ more than twenty years but also that you have regenerated more than once!”

“Dawn, there's new data about the necklace--”

“Bog, please take your necklace and wait outside!”

“Don't have to tell me twice,” Bog took the box and exited the TARDIS without looking back.

Sunny hesitated at the door, “You good, Dawn?”

“Yes, thank you, Sunny. We'll just be a few minutes.”

He left, door clicking shut behind him.

The TARDIS hummed quietly, the console monitors displaying the date and location, updating changes in weather and levels of vortex energy, text blinking on the screens.

“I--” the Doctor began, breaking the hum of quiet.

“Don't,” Dawn said, her voice low but sharp, “Don't lie. I can see it in your face. You're scrambling for a clever answer. Or an excuse not to talk about it. You don't get to do that.”

“I'm not trying to.”

“This is the chronometer,” Dawn held it up, “It scanned you, assessed your age. Are you going to tell me it's broken? Dropped a decimal point? Sat too near the time vortex?”

The Doctor looked at the floor.

“This tells me exactly how old you are. But I want to hear you admit it. I want to hear the truth come out of your mouth. Because the face you're wearing now? Right now, as far as I know, it is the face of someone who has done nothing but lie to me. Trick me. Keep me in the dark like a child. As far as I know that is _not_ the face of my sister.”

The Doctor hadn't moved since she'd walked into the TARDIS. Shoulders slightly hunched, hands slightly out from her sides, like she was trying to show that they were empty.

She watched her sister, face expressionless, but eyes shining.

Dawn's last words made the Doctor tuck her head down and shut her eyes.

“We were sisters,” Dawn said, more softly, but with a harsh edge of emotion, “We shared everything. There was nothing secret between us, from the moment we were born, we were together.”

“Then we weren't,” the Doctor looked up, “things happen. Things that aren't fit to be shared.”

“You lied to me.”

“I kept you safe!” the Doctor spoke fiercely, some raw wound on her heart throbbing under the sting of her sister's accusations, “I lied to you, yes! To protect you! To keep you safe, to keep you--”

“Keep me from _what_?” Dawn's hands were balled up into fists, her face tight with anger, “From growing up?”

“To keep you from being _anything_ like _me_.”

There was a long silence.

Tears were bright in Dawn's eyes.

The Doctor just stared at the floor.

“How long. Tell me how long. I want to hear you say it.”

“You already know.”

“ _Say it,_ ” Dawn hissed through her teeth, “Stop running and _say it_.”

Drawing in a shuddering breath, the doctor squared her shoulders and looked her sister in the eye, speaking in the flat voice of a lecturer reciting dry facts from a text book.

“I am nine hundred and thirty-three. You were preserved in a time loop, unaging and unaware of the passage of time outside, for eight hundred and ten years. This is my ninth regeneration, the ninth face I have worn.”

Dawn gasped and tried to say something.

The Doctor went on in that same relentless, flat voice.

“I spent a long time looking for a safe place, a safe time, to let you live again. But after a long time I realized that I would never find any such place. So I did the best I could and I let you live again.”

“Eight hundred . . . what have you been doing all this time? What about mom and dad? The council? After the Time War, didn't they release everyone that was preserved in time loops?”

“Oh, little rising star,” the Doctor's voice broke. She lifted a hand to reach out to her sister, but drew back again, “I did my best. It wasn't enough, but you have to believe me, I _tried_.”

* * *

 

Bog leaned on the outside of the TARDIS, aware of the rise and fall of voices inside.

Sunny was standing on his hands against the side of the TARDIS.

“Why are you doing that?” Bog asked when he got bored with picking at his hand.

“Because the world's turned upside down and I'm trying to compensate.”

“Heh. Good answer.”

“And . . . you're a plant now?”

“Temporarily, it seems.”

“You getting enough sun there, buddy?”

“ _Hilarious._ ”

“Enough water?”

A thought struck Bog and he straighted up.

“My aunt said I couldn't drink for, like, two weeks. She _cannot_ have been serious.”

“As a first-hand witness to the results of you knocking back a shot too many,” Sunny flipped back onto his feet, “I can't see that as anything but a positive.”

“You sound like my mother,” Bog slouched back down against the TARDIS. He glanced at the signs on it, “What _is_ a police box, anyhow?”

“I'm more interested in why it says 'pull to open' when the doors open inward. Hey, Bog?”

“Hm?”

“You know this area, right?”

“Yeah, pretty well. Why?”

“How long has that art shop been on the corner?”

“There aren't any art shops, this is a business district . . . okay, I stand corrected, that is no doubt an art shop. That is new.”

“New like it opened recently, or new like it wasn't there when we, uh, parked here earlier?”

“Are you saying . . .?”

“I'm saying there's a painting of the Doctor in the display window and I find that more than a little weird.”

Bog rapped on the door of the police box, “Ladies?”

The door burst open, a cloud of smoke—the normal sort—billowing out as the two Time Lords darted out, coughing.

“Yeah, we know,” Dawn wheezed, “our TARDIS does not like Roland's TARDIS. Where is it?”

“There,” Bog and Sunny pointed.

“What a face!” the Doctor said, squinting at the paintings, “who's that supposed to be?”

“Uh, it's actually you,” Bog said, “obviously?”

“Really?” the doctor felt her jaw, “huh.”

“She's not good with faces,” Dawn explained, “Even her own.”

“Which is why I appreciate marsh man's face,” the Doctor commented, streaks of soot dragged across her face as she pushed her hair back, “Very memorable cheekbones.”

“What about me?” Sunny asked, curious.

“If you ever changed your hair I would have no idea who you were.”

The Doctor trotted off toward the art shop.

“Hey,” Sunny called Dawn back, “how'd it go?”

“It's a work in progress,” Dawn grimaced, “ _and_ we got interrupted. Which was a relief to my sister, lemme tell you. Um, she kind of told me some hard things and . . . I can't really deal with it right now. _That's_ a trait we still share. Our ability to pack things up and pretend it isn't seething away in the back of the cupboard of our brains, rotting and ripening.”

“Eesh. We are so going for coffee later and you are totally going to tell me about this.”

“And deal with my feelings like a healthy person? Not in this family!”

* * *

 

“Well, there I am,” the Doctor said, looking at the paintings in the window.

“You're looking at the wrong one,” Bog pointed to the correct one, “If it helps, it's the one where you're wearing purple eyeshadow and lipstick.”

“That does help, actually.”

“Don't recognize anybody else?”

“Nope. Don't know any of these other women.”

“Roland's other girlfriends, maybe?”

“It's a possibility.”

“I hate this guy more and more. What is he even trying to accomplish here besides being annoying?”

“World domination. Galactic domination. Anything that involves him being in charge.”

“So, we're dealing with the most stereotypical comic book villain ever?”

“You should have been there when he grew a goatee.”

“You're yanking my chain.”

“I can't make this up.”

“How did it go with your sister--”

“Better go inside and check this out!”

“Way to avoid the topic,” Bog clapped sarcastically, “and are you really just going to walk in there? It's probably a trap!”

“It is absolutely a trap. But nothing is going to happen if we just stand out here.”

“And if we don't go in you have to talk to your sister.”

“In a word, yeah.”

A bell dingled cheerfully when they pushed the door open.

The interior of the building was white and minimalist, showcasing the paintings that hung on the walls and rested on easels around the room. Unlike the paintings in the window display, all the paintings inside were of Roland.

“Oh, that's a relief,” the Doctor remarked, “Almost afraid he'd forgotten how to be self-absorbed.”

“You recognize _his_ face,” Bog noted.

“Try as I might to forget it.”

* * *

 

Dawn and Sunny had been trailing behind and were about to follow Bog and the Doctor into the shop when the door slammed shut.

“Not this again! Dawn sprinted to the door and rattled the handle. The door wouldn't budge.

“Oh boy,” Sunny said, seeing metal sheets sliding in front of the windows and door, cover the glass and hiding the interior of the shop.

“No, don't you dare!” Dawn pointed her sonic screwdriver at the armored door, “You are not allowed to get out of our conversation this easily!”

The walls of the store shimmered and faded, solidified, then faded again, the noise of engines telling Dawn and Sunny that the TARDIS was taking off.

“This is bad!”

“How bad?”

Dawn backed up and watched the building vanishing, “Think of something very bad then add another suitcase and carry-on bag of bad!”

“Can we follow them?” Sunny asked, looking back at the other TARDIS.

Dawn took his hand and they began running for the box.

“We can certainly try!”


	13. Chapter 13

The sky was on fire.

But on the ground it was dark, shadows layered with a dim orange light.

And there was screaming.

Running.

The shadows seethed with people, people running for their lives.

A city stood dark against the blazing sky, buildings glowing a dull orange as they began to break apart, pieces falling, screams rising sharply in response, then cutting off when the rubble smashed into the ground.

Children.

Children were crying, lost and frightened, caught in a war that they had no part in making. Casualties of their elders' poor choices.

Nothing could save the children.

“No!”

The sound of the voice cast ripples across the burning world, washing away the flames, the sound of feet scrambling across the rubble fading away into silence.

The silence when the wind died down, letting the dust settle, leaving only the crunch of your boots on the ground, the dry sound as you swallow, holding your breath, afraid it would give you away.

The silence that isn't really silence.

It's full of the noise of your comrade's boots, the rattling of gear, the pounding of your hearts.

Waiting for the signal.

Waiting for the order.

Because it had been following orders.

There had been no way to know.

“No! Not that either!'

Ripples ran through the air, coolness breathing into the air like a sigh of relief.

Trees, old and tall, had grown up and blocked out the sky with their dense canopy. The quiet here was muffled by the dense growth of the forest. It was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead and when things moved out of sight it was impossible to know what they were.

“Now, _this_ is very interesting,”

Bog twisted around and found that the Doctor was standing on a fallen tree, looking out over the small area of visible forest with a contemplative attitude.

“Yeah?” Bog asked, more to buy himself time to think than to actually prompt an answer. He had no idea where he was or how he had got there and if it was at all possible he wasn't going to give the Doctor the satisfaction of appealing to her for answers.

“Yes, because I would say this appears to be part of the Black Forest in Germany, but it feels far too big.”

Bog bit his tongue to keep from asking what she was talking about.

“This feels to be about the same time period the primrose stone was first cut. But four hundred years ago the forest did not look like this. At least, not according to history.”

Tired of the crick in his neck he was getting from looking up at the Doctor's perch, Bog swallowed his pride and asked, “What's going on?”

“Psychic feedback,” The Doctor picked her way down off the fallen tree, digging the toes of her boots into the moss that covered the soft, rotting wood, “Something activated a psychic data dump from your necklace, but the connection was bad and there was a lot of interference. So you might have picked up some trace memories--”

“There was a city. It was shining and silver . . . or, it would have been, except . . . everything was on fire . . .”

“Nothing to worry about. Just signals getting crossed.”

“None of this is real, then? But . . .”

“No more real than memories are.”

“I saw--”

“Yes, yes, I know, I was here too. Had to give things a nudge before you got stuck reliving old times.”

“Nudge?” Bog wondered how much the Doctor had picked up of his memory of his tour in Afghanistan.

“Poke at your subconscious. Play word association. Look, like this,” the Doctor picked a pebble off the ground, “I say something, like, 'school', and give you a little push--”

She tossed the pebble and it hit the air like the surface of a pond, shining ripples spreading out and distorting the forest. For a few seconds the forest was gone and Bog was standing in the hall of his school, fourth year, his knuckles throbbing from having punched Lucas Campbell in the face, driven to it after Lucas had made one too many cracks about Bog's looks.

The ripples settled and the forest was back.

“What are you doing poking around in my head?” Bog rubbed the traces of phantom pain out of his hand, “I don't remember inviting you.”

“You got pulled in by the data dump and I followed. It appears we are in a memory of your family's ancestral home. At least, their ancestral home on earth, anyway.”

“Grand. How do we get out? Weren't we just talking to your creepy ex in the art shop? And being abducted?”

“He'll wait. This is all in our heads so it's really taking no more than a few seconds. Less, since we've got my processing power to work with.”

“Don't you ever get tired of tooting your own horn?”

“Don't you ever get tired to keeping your eyebrows locked in a permanent glower? I swear, those things are the most aggressive eyebrows I've ever encountered. They're like _attack_ eyebrows. You could take bottle caps off with them.”

The Doctor was standing on her tiptoes to inspect Bog's eyebrows.

He leaned forward, making her drop back on her heels.

“What about you?” He pointed a long finger at her, “Have you ever met a hairbrush in your life? You're like some tiny, angry, rumpled pixie. Probably so angry because you've never been able to get anything off the top shelf without someone giving you a boost.”

“My dear marsh man,” She smacked his hand away, “shelves have nicely spaced footholds built right into them. Why would I get a hand up when I can just climb the thing?”

“ . . . how many shelves have you pulled over on yourself in your lifetime?”

“The shelves in the TARDIS are built into the walls!”

“And why is that, I wonder?”

“Let's get back to the matter at hand, shall we?”

“Only because I take the change of subject as acknowledgement that I was winning this argument,” Bog said, folding his arms, still leaning over the tiny woman.

She pushed her face a little closer to his, twisting up her mouth as she searched for some appropriately cutting retort to put him in his place.

“Your eyes are very blue!”

Bog blinked, confused.

“It isn't _fair_.”

The Doctor spun around and stormed back to her fallen tree.

A branch caught her ankle and she crashed to the ground.

“Are you okay?”

“I am fine!” She popped back up, “This is just a psychic interface! I don't actually have nerve endings in here. The pain is literally all in my head.”

“Right.”

“All of this,” the Doctor staggered to her feet, yanking the edge of her coat off a grasping branch before spinning around with her arms thrown out to indicate the forest around them, “This is just an interface for the data your ancestors left for you. We should be able to access it and find out more about what your fashionable bauble is capable of.”

“So, it's full of information? Like a flashdrive?”

“If a flashdrive could contain what is possibly the entire history of your people, constructed from their memories with such care and detail that you can smell that the dirt is still wet from rain, feel the veins on the leaves . . . then, yes, 'like a flashdrive'.”

“Yeah, I've got mud in my boots. Could've done without that.”

“I am plagued by such tiny minds. Just try and access the information.”

“How, great and powerful time wizard?”

“Identify yourself.”

“Identify myself. Just, “Hey, Bog, here, any of my tree ancestors listening?”, or what?”

“Maybe with a bit more pizazz. Confidence, at the very least.”

“Uh. I'm a descendant of the . . . Cheem? Cheem. I'm a descendant of the Cheem and I hope that this interface isn't password protected.”

“Poetry.”

“I'm a singer, not an actor.”

“Despite your shortcomings as a performer, I think it worked.”

Bog followed the Doctor's gaze and saw that another person had appeared.

He was assuming it was a person, anyway.

The shape of it was human but the details were not. The face was rigid, lined with deep grooves, like patterns in tree bark. It's head swept back into a crown of wood, the bark of it layered, like it really was part of a tree, separating at the rings.

Bog stared at it.

It stared back at Bog, absolutely serene.

“He's waiting for you to ask a question,” the Doctor shoved her hands into Bog's back and pushed him toward the tree person, “Ask it about why the stone was cut up and what the yellow stone is.”

“Stop pushing!”

“Then stop just standing there gapping like a fish! I can only stretch five seconds so far!”

“It's only been that? You must be doing a prize-winning job because it's certainly felt like an eternity!”

“Ask. Questions.”

* * *

 

“Question: what's the plan?”

Dawn was spraying down the interior of the TARDIS with a fire extinguisher.

Sunny stood in the door, ready to duck out if anything else caught on fire or started spewing toxic smoke.

“Talk some sense into this bucket of defective quantum drives that my sister is so irrationally attached to!”

“Is it safe to use a fire extinguisher on an electrical fire?”

“It isn't electrical! It runs off of energy from the time vortex! And I don't know whether or not it's safe to use a fire extinguisher on that because my sister threw the user manual into a supernova!”

“Why?”

“Apparently they had a difference of opinion!”

The last fire put out, Sunny risked coming back inside, “Why does it freak out when Roland is nearby?”

“Not sure. Something is screwy about his time line, I think. And the TARDIS _hates_ that sort of thing. She tries to do an emergency evacuation. Once she abandoned us at the North Pole and went all the way over to the South Pole. That was the worst hitchhiking trip _ever_.”

“Should I just nod and pretend I understand any of that?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Dawn put on her glasses and glanced over the monitors, “She's got safety protocols and a strong sense of self-preservation. Paradoxes, anomalies, the TARDIS sees them as danger and tries to get away. Roland might be existing twice in the same time line, or something like that.”

“But, aren't I doing that right now? Future me is at work right now, remember?”

“But that's pretty tidy. You're not trying to change the past, you're just preserving a time loop. If Roland—or whoever he is—is trying to mess with a fixed point in time . . . well, this makes the old girl unhappy.”

Dawn patted the console.

“Huh. I guess I kind of get that. What are we going to do? Figure out what important event he's trying to change? Do you have like . . . future history books?”

“Loads. But I've also got a lot up here, too,” Dawn tapped her forehead, “much more portable and easier to reference. From a historical point of view there really isn't anything big going on right now. Not in the next few months, even.”

“What is there aside from a historical point of view?”

“Oh, there are loads of smaller things that are important and don't make it into the history books. Little things that lead up to big things. They're harder to spot. Like, if somebody very important was going to do great things, then it is very important that their parents actually meet, or the important person would never be born.”

“Which means that Roland is possibly trying to sabotage someone's first date? That is . . . _pettier_ than I imagined messing with history would be.”

“It could also be a poet not seeing a daffodil at the critical moment and never writing a great poem that touches the hearts and minds of the world. Someone cleaning out the petri dishes and never discovering penicillin . . . yeah. Our best bet is to shadow Roland and stop him in the act.”

“Except our ride is kind of not cooperating right now, remember?”

“So we'll need to use an alternative mode of transport. Luckily, my sister doesn't know that I know where she keeps that vortex manipulator! Like, a wrist-watch time machine!”

Sunny was starting to recognize that manic gleam in Dawn's eyes as a sign things were about to get, well, for lack of a better word, _interesting_.

“It's dangerous, isn't it?”

“Um. It might be a teeny-tiny bit . . . glitchy.”

“How glitchy. Lags a few seconds glitchy? Or stuck in Medieval Europe glitchy?”

“It tends to have very, very brief power outages. Very brief. You hardly notice. Except if you were traveling through the vacuum of space at the time . . .”

“I have a feeling this is what I was trying to warn myself about on the phone earlier.”

“Are you coming?”

“Heck, I know I make it back. Let's go!”


	14. Chapter 14

“I have to admit, when I found out that the pendent wasn't made of Yectumial crystals I was thrown for a bit of a loop. Only temporarily, of course, but thrown all the same.”

Roland's voice was echoing softly around the room and Bog's head was swimming with endless forests, wooden spaceships, and faces craved into craggy bark. It took him a few moments to come to terms with the floor being made out of level tile instead of an uneven mat of plants, branches, and moss. He had no attention to spare for whatever the preening nitwit was droning on about.

“Wooden spaceships?” Bog asked, still seeing the improbable vessels drifting through space, traveling from one star to the next, “For real?”

“Your people are good at growing things,” the Doctor said, her voice sounding strange, echoing off the bare walls of the art shop instead of being absorbed into the stillness of the forest.

“Stop calling them that. 'Your people'.”

“Embrace your heritage. Your roots, if you will.”

“Fairly sure you made that pun already.”

“It's a classic. Worth repeating.”

“ _Excuse me_ ,” Roland sounded annoyed, “I was just outlining my previous plan! I suppose I won't bore you by repeating it, but be assured that it was nothing less than brilliant.”

“Open your eyes, marsh man,” the Doctor ordered Bog, “you're still drifting back into the pendant's data storage.”

Bog opened his eyes. He hadn't realized they had still been closed, so many images were still playing out across his mind's eye.

“Um?” Bog asked, finding that the Doctor's golden eyes were only inches from his. The lingering traces of the forest burning up in the embarrassment of realizing she had her hands on either side of his face, fingertips pressed to his temples.

“Finally,” the Doctor took her hands away and Bog felt something slide out of his mind, like a lost train of thought, “Took you look enough to snap out of it.”

“Really, I am monologuing and you could at least make a pretense of paying attention!”

“Sorry, yes,” the Doctor waved her hands in apology, “It's just, after a few hundred years of doing this same thing over and over again . . . well. You get to know the ins and outs of it, don't you? Your first plan was rendered obsolete by new information, you thought of some new clever scheme instead and now I'm shocked and awed and probably say something like 'you'll never get away with this'.”

Roland folded his arms over the front of his perfectly tailored green waistcoat, a petulant look on his face, “Well, if I had know I was _boring_ you!”

“I do think the topic has come up once or twice before.”

“I didn't know you _meant_ it.”

“No, no, please, go on with what you were saying. You figured out the pendant wasn't made of Yectumial crystals? Did you figure out what it actually was made of?”

“Admittedly,” Roland unfolded his arms and paced across the shop, the movement showing off his highly polished shoes, “That took me a few days to puzzle out, so I took the time to do a little painting and clear my head.”

“A few days?” Bog asked, “It hasn't even been a day since your barbershop of evil.”

Roland spread out his arms, gesturing at the shop, “Darlin', please explain to your glorified houseplant that we are standing in a _time machine_.”

“It's not his fault he was raised to believe in linear time.”

“ _Still_. Luckily you left me a nice genetic sample to give me some clues,” Roland pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket, “When you were so kind as to slice open your houseplant's hand.”

“I dropped the scalpel,” the Doctor pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Yes, you did, buttercup. Thank you for that. Interesting blood sample. Mainly just the dull human DNA, but a very strong hint of Cheem. Obviously that must have been what activated that nanotech cloud. Which gave me a little idea.”

“I don't suppose it was to quit bothering us and take up a career in toothpaste ads?”

Bog rubbed his eyes, only half paying attention to the meticulously groomed buffoon strutting back and forth in front of the paintings. He'd just learned a whole lot about his family history. Practically everything, really. Even why the original primrose stone—the primrose _seed—_ had been cut up into smaller pieces. The sheer amount of information was still churning around in his head, trying to find space enough to settle in.

“Darlin', would you keep your pet _quiet_.”

“No. I enjoy how he breaks your stride.”

“Really, darlin', when are you going to get over this phase of dragging home strays? You know they just all run away or die and break your hearts. Not to mention all the wasted effort of training them.”

“Heel, boy,” the Doctor pushed Bog back when he bristled at Roland's comments, “let's hear the end of the monologue.”

“Thank you,” Roland spun his finger through the curl that fell over his forehead, “I've always been fascinated by the Cheem. Such idiotic space hippies. _Wooden_ spaceships, can you believe it? The insane thing is that they _worked_.”

Bog rolled his eyes, then bit his teeth together, a sudden flood of information about the wooden spaceships slamming into his head, prompted by Roland's comment.

“They _grew_ them. They grew spaceships with nothing more than a few seeds and a little dirt. Everything organic. The environmentalists would flip their lids over how disgustingly nature-friendly it was. Of course, the skill of growing these ships has been, sadly, lost to time and Cheem are forced to slum it with the rest of us in metal ships.”

Roland frowned at one of his self-portraits.

He straightened it and the frown disappeared.

The Doctor started scanning the room with her sonic screwdriver, whipping it behind her back when Roland turned back around.

Bog had a headache.

“Yes, as I was saying,” Roland brushed an invisible speck of dust off his shirt cuff, “If some incredibly dedicated, absolutely brilliant individual of an advanced species happened to rediscover these lost methods of shipbuilding . . . that would be a remarkable thing, would it not?”

“It would be okay, I guess,” the Doctor shrugged.

“Just think, for one moment, everything it must take to grow a ship. And what sort of things you could do with these growing skills, aside from making spaceships. You could, for example, grow an unlimited number of soldiers.”

“And take over the world,” the Doctor sighed, sounding bored, “but they would just be plants. A spaceship has to have a pilot, your soldiers would need to be controlled. The number of people it would take to control your plant army . . . you might as well just have a conventional army.”

“Hm, yes,” Roland clasped his hands behind his back and considered a painting of his profile with an air of sadness, “you'd need some sort of massive artificial intelligence program to make it work.”

Bog's heart stopped beating for a moment, realizing dawning.

“If only four hundred years ago someone had installed an AI security program to protect the remains of their culture's history. Something like what you would need to control a cloud of nanobots. Oh!” Roland spun around, snapping his fingers, “Just like that one you set on _me_ earlier!”

“Still,” the Doctor edged in front of Bog, “there's the problem of getting access to that information. The security program is obviously not friendly to outsiders.”

The pendant was in Bog's hand, his knuckles turning white from their death grip on it. Yesterday the necklace had been some unfortunate family heirloom that his mother trotted out on special occasions. Now he knew it contained centuries of history, most of which had thought to have been lost. Even if he didn't consider it his personal history it was still important. There were people on earth and people somewhere in the stars that had thought the past of their people was a closed book, never to be reopened. The pendant held the stories of so many people. Stories that their descendants should know.

Now this well-tailored moron wanted it.

The man who had casually broken a mirror and held it to the throat of his own sister-in-law.

“Then it's lucky, isn't it,” Roland said with a charming smile and theatrical wave of his arm, “that I've got someone on hand with admin, access, isn't it?”

Roland snapped his fingers and the floor curled up like a cresting wave.

“Hah, I'm kidding! It isn't luck. I'm just that good.”

“How does he keep doing that!” Bog threw himself at the barred door, trying to find a handhold before the floor was pulled out from under him.

“Later model of TARDIS!” the Doctor aimed her sonic at the oncoming wave of tiles, “Psychic interface! You can manipulate it with a thought!”

“I'm surprised he can spare a thought for anything besides his own reflection!”

The tiles wavered under the whistling of the sonic, but did not stop. The tiles crested, bearing with them several easels. 

Bog looked the Doctor in the eye and said with great sincerity, just before the wave crashed down on them:

“I hate you.”


	15. Chapter 15

“You see, humans are boring.”

The primrose pendant was a bright spot of rosy color in the sterile white of the circular room. It dangled from Roland's hand, looking even gaudier than usual when compared to his crisp neatness, straight lines of his clothing and carefully calculated curl of his hair.

“Fascinating,” Bog tried to wiggle his feet and hands, but he was caught fast and the wall had no give. The wall had swallowed him up to the waist and held his hands trapped above his head. Somewhere to Bog's left the Doctor was similarly trapped and muttering under her breath.

“Humans are boring, dull little creatures and almost entirely useless.”

“You're hurting my feelings.”

“What I need to unlock this,” Roland bounced the pendant up and down, “is more Cheem.”

“Sorry I couldn't have been more help.”

“No, you don't grasp what I'm saying. Not surprising. Your little trinket keeps you and your like mostly human, covering up anything non-human with a perception filter built into your genetic code. Without this you'd go full potted plant over the course of several years.”

“My family does tend to have a problem with dry skin when we get older.”

“Now, you managed to access the information contained in this, but you've failed to activate any of its other abilities. It's not just a passive receptacle of data, you know.”

The Doctor's muttering got louder and more annoyed.

The seed had been a battery, of sorts, Bog understood. It collected power from the sun and stored it so it could be used for any number of things. To manipulate the growth of the forest, to make ships, even to make the Cheem look human.

At least, it had been. Until something happened, four centuries ago, that ended with the primrose seed in pieces, its abilities crippled, patched together and held in place by the yellow gem in the center.

Roland dropped the pendant into a box.

“This is rather like what you were using earlier, to block the signal of the pendent,” Roland snapped the box shut and the lid fused to the box, the seam disappearing completely, “But far less makeshift and created specifically for the purpose of isolating the gems.”

“Obviously you don't want me setting the cloud of death on you.”

“Obviously. But it also serves the purpose of keeping the pendant from maintaining your human form. The gems have to send out a constant signal that fortify your genetic scaffolding, keep it from slipping into old habits. Like growing leaves instead of hair and bark instead of toenails.”

“Yeah, okay, so in like ten years I'll be a bit green around the gills. You've got my knees knocking, for sure. Is this wall going to ruin my jacket? Leather is hard to keep in condition, you know, and it's already got its share of rips and scuffs.”

“I'm so glad,” Roland tapped the box, a smug little smile on his face, “So glad you're taking this situation with the seriousness it commands. Darlin', would you like to explain to your pet philodendron what's going on?”

The Doctor's muttering cut off and she craned her head around to look at Bog, “He's going to expose you to the time vortex to try and speed up your personal time.”

“What?”

“Ten years will be like ten minutes and you'll be completely Cheem. At least, the remaining human DNA will be negligible.”

“What you're saying is that I'm going to lose my good looks.”

Roland shuddered at the idea of Bog and 'good looks' mentioned in the same sentence.

The Doctor's lips quirked up slightly.

“I need Cheem DNA to use as a basis to break the security on the pendant,” Roland continued, trying to refocus their attention back on him.

“Aren’t you even going to try, I don’t know, torture me or something? What if I just gave you access?”

“What would be the fun of that?”

Roland waved a had and the wall shifted, moving in a wave of cubes, setting Bog further back in the wall, blocking his view of the Doctor.

“Bog,” she called, straining to catch his eye before he was out of sight, “Bog, you're going to be fine. I'm going to get you out, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Bog replied, watching the Doctor's ruffled head disappear, panic rising up in his chest. He had only a rudimentary idea of what Roland was planning, but considering it was Roland . . . it was going to be bad.

“I swear, I'll get you out. I swear. I promise. You'll be walking out of here with that necklace in your hand and you can go back to grouching around and fiddling with your guitar like a moody teenager.”

“That's rich,” Bog couldn't help but laugh a little, “coming from the oldest moody teenager in all of time and space. That's a promise, huh? Tell you what, you've got to come to one of my gigs after we get out of this, to make up for it. And not the street corner weekend stuff, one of my actual paying gigs, with an audience and everything. I'll show you who 'plays decently'.”

“It's a date.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Buttercup,” Roland sauntered toward her, “you and I know exactly how much your promises are worth.”

Roland snapped his fingers, the wall closing over in front of Bog, sealing him in a small rectangle of space. Just before the last crack of light was blocked out he caught a glimpse of Roland's face twisted into a look of anger, contorted and ugly.

“Not even the breath you waste on them.”

Then there was only darkness.

* * *

 

“Okay, so we got a little lost!”

“Dawn, we just spent a week in the 1960s!”

“We had a good time, didn't we?”

“Okay, yeah. Encounters with blatant racism aside, it was kind of awesome. I mean, we met the Beatles! And Ray Charles! But when you said that this botax manipulator--”

“ _Vortex_ manipulator.”

“--lost power and needed a little time to recharge you failed to mention that 'a little time' actually means 'three days, possibly a week'.”

“Sorry, the manipulator is synced to the TARDIS and bounced us back to the last time we'd visited. I've turned off the connection and we should be able to make half a dozen jumps now that it isn't burning up energy searching for the TARDIS's signal.”

“Good. Great. Next time remember to turn it on airplane mode _before_ we take off.”

“Noted. We're back within the same hour we left in, I just need to trace Roland's TARDIS and set the new coordinates.”

Sunny was suffering from whatever the time travel equivalent of jet lag was. But at the same time he was still exhilarated from actually traveling in time. And from spending a whole week running around 1960s American with Dawn.

The power to time travel may have bugged out but the vortex manipulator still acted as a handy teleporter and they had spent the week hopping from event to event, falling asleep in the backs of buses after concerts, holding hands in front of guys who started to make trouble about a white woman hanging around with a black man, then running around a corner and teleporting away.

Also there had been a small problem with an invasion of lizard aliens trying to broadcast a signal on radio waves, encoded into a recording of _I Heard it Through the Grapevine_ , meant to mentally enslave everyone who heard it to the will of the lizard queen. That had been solved fairly quickly once Dawn convinced the FBI that she worked for them and got their help to alter the broadcast.

Sunny felt like he was just being dragged along for the ride.

He didn't even mind.

He was having the time of his life.

It was hard to pull his thoughts back to the present and remember that Dawn's sister and Bog had only just been abducted and probably needed help immediately.

It was especially hard to remember anything when after Dawn finished calculating the coordinates she kissed him.

“Okay, I need you to take this phone and stand in an open area. It will act as a homing beacon so I can find my way back. I may or may not be bringing Roland's TARDIS with me so find a nice big space. If the phone rings, answer it and that will activate the signal and let me lock on. I don't want to broadcasting indefinitely in case somebody else picks up the signal and decides to drop by for a quick afternoon invasion. Are you okay?”

“Uh, you handed me a phone and then everything went blank.”

“It was the kiss, wasn't it?”

“Mm, might have been.”

“Because I am a hugger and a kisser and I forget about boundaries so I might have done that without thinking because you're an extraordinarily lovely person and very cute. Can I do it again?”

“What?”

“Kiss you.”

“Yes! I mean, yeah. If you want to--”

Dawn wanted to.

An interlude of uncertain length passed before either of them remembered what they were supposed to be doing.

“Yes, phone!” Dawn made sure he was holding it, “Open space, answer when I call! I'll see you soon.”

She hit a button on the vortex manipulator and vanished.

Sunny was just dazedly making his way out of the TARDIS and heading in the general direction of some empty lots when Dawn reappeared, her hair slightly singed.

She laughed nervously, “I may have dropped a one in my calculations. I've fixed it now. Okay, bye!”

She bent down and kissed him quickly on the lips before vanishing again.

Sunny lingered where he was for about half a minute, but started walking again when it became clear she was not popping back again.

* * *

 

“Let's see how things are coming along!”

There was light again and Bog hurt.

A new pain stabbed in his arm and he cracked open his gritty eyes to see Roland sticking him with a needle. Roland drew some blood and held up the syringe to examine the color.

“Hardly even starting,” Roland frowned, tossing the syringe over his shoulder. It shattered somewhere behind him, “You haven't even begun to cook yet, tree man.”

It was dark again.

Bog's skin crawled.

Tingled like he'd stuck his finger in a light socket.

He could feel his skin pulling tight and starting to crack.

Light.

Another needle stabbed into his arm.

“Really, you have to stop dawdling, there's really only so much small talk you can make when the other person isn't talking to you. Isn't that right, sweetheart?”

Faintly, Bog heard the Doctor telling Roland to “drop dead” along with some other things he couldn't make out, but sounded colorful.

“What a way for a lady to talk!” Roland huffed, indignant, before closing Bog back into the dark.

Bog felt his bones twisting.

That what he thought it was, at least.

Anyway, it hurt.

There was a blur of light, needles stabbed in his arm, then dark again.

Bog counted it a mercy when he felt consciousness slip away


	16. Chapter 16

“I do hope you appreciate how clever this setup is,” The syringe Roland had just pulled from Bog's arm was full of sickly orange fluid, a small screen on the side displaying some text. Whatever the text said did not satisfy Roland and he clicked his tongue in disappointment before continuing with his boasting,“I've fastforwarded the breakdown of your human DNA by five years now without you starving to death or even needing a shave. Well, no more in need of a shave than when we began.”

“I'm agog.”

Bog's mouth was painfully dry and speaking reopened the deep cracks around his mouth, the taste of blood thick on his tongue. But he still made the effort to muster what sarcasm he could, just so he could see Roland's miffed expression.

“I could speed up the process,” Roland jabbed a finger into Bog's arm, right in the ripening bruise caused by half a dozen or more needle marks, “but that could kill you and we can't have that happening just yet.”

Each time a needle was stabbed into Bog's arm he could feel that it was getting harder for the needle to pierce the skin and find a vein. He could see deep, dry cracks laying open in his skin to reveal the damp, still soft texture of bark. Desperately thirsty and in extreme pain, Bog's mind focused on the ludicrous thought that it was a shame that all the work put into his tattoos would go to waste.

Maybe he was just trying to avoid thinking about how his body was being ripped apart and if he didn't die from it he would be some sort of freakish Ent for the rest of his life.

He'd just wanted to get his guitar and the necklace back.

And a stiff drink.

How had things even ended up like this.

He was mad at the Doctor for getting him into this. He would have put more effort into it if he didn't hear her berating Roland every time light and consciousness coincided.

Bog was having trouble keeping track of time. It was just a shuffling of dark and light and pain. Even the needles stuck in his arm blurred together.

At one point light brought with it a strange taste in the air and he had started coughing. There wasn't enough air, he couldn't force it into his lungs, all his effort only seizing up his throat. He had no idea how long he coughed, but he pulled something along his ribs during the convulsive fits. His arms and legs held in place, something in his shoulders separated as the fits of coughing shook his body.

“Congratulations!” Roland said sometime after the coughing began to fade, “You just switched over to breathing carbon dioxide!”

Bog just wheezed.

But he tried to do it in a scornful way.

The liquid in the syringe was dark amber, with a hint of red.

“Nearly there!” Roland said cheerfully.

A crash and a prolonged, wordless noise of complaint made Roland stop in the act of sealing Bog in again.

“Buttercup, look at this mess!”

The Doctor staggered into view, walking a little lopsided. But that might just have been Bog's vision wavering again.

“That's what happens when I hack your psychic interface and neutralize the signal keeping the wall solid,” the Doctor held out her sonic screwdriver, “shouldn't have let me hang onto this.”

There was white powder in her hair and all over her clothing, her face sprinkled with it, dark lips looking almost black in comparison. From Bog's vantage point he couldn't see her eyes, only the dark smudges of her eyeshadow, and to him she looked like a ghoulish apparition advancing on Roland trim personage.

“Aw, honeybunch, I'm going to have to replace that whole wall! Did you have to attack it on a molecular level? If you'd just switched off the program it would have reverted to cubes and we'd all be happier.”

“I felt spiteful.”

The room rippled and this time Bog was almost certain it wasn't just his eyes playing tricks on him. Everything moved too fast for him to keep track of the action, all he could see was the Doctor's small shape running, dodging walls that were trying to snatch her, jumping over a few of them. But she could only run so far within the confines of the room and she was slammed to the ground with the floor grabbed her by the ankle.

Roland was sauntering his way over to her, speaking in a chiding tone.

Then Dawn appeared.

Bog wondered if that should be startling. He was too busying being parched to be sure of anything.

The floor rose up to grab Dawn too, but Bog blinked and missed her capture.

Actually, he must have missed more than that, because the floor smoothed itself down again, white and empty. Only Roland remained, walking over to the spot where the Doctor should have been laying.

“No, this is fine, this is fine” Roland sounded a little shaken as he straightened his shirt and ran a hand through his hair, “Now that the ladies are gone we can have a nice talk while my TARDIS traces my sweetie. You know, just a couple of guys being guys. Talk about sports and protein and other manly things.”

Roland produced one of his innumerable syringes and stabbed Bog's arm with vicious force in order to get the needle to get though to a vein. It felt like being stabbed with a dull pencil, but it woke Bog up a little and he sight cleared in time to see the clear, dark amber of the blood sample.

Like tree sap.

The couldn't be healthy.

“Finally! You're cooked to perfection!”

* * *

 

“I had it _handled_!”

“You were about to get _squashed_!”

“You should have gotten Bog out of there first!”

“I was kind of in a rush!”

Sunny had answered the phone as requested but Roland's TARDIS had failed to appear. Dawn had appeared with her arms wrapped around her sister. The Doctor looked like a furious cat that had been picked up and cuddled against its wishes. She shoved Dawn off and immediately began shouting complaints about the rescue.

“I had a plan!” The Doctor raged.

“If your plan was to get squashed like a ripe grape then it was going _brilliantly_.”

“I would have been fine! Now you've left Bog alone up there with Roland!”

“Then let's go back and get him!” Dawn began to tap on the vortex manipulator's keypad. After a moment she frowned and her fingers slowed, uncertain, “Um. Roland might have, well--”

“Moved?” the Doctor suggested pointedly, “Gosh! Do you _think_?”

“Not a problem! I'll just track the signal down again--”

“What signal?”

“The signal from your . . .” Dawn faltered, looking at what her sister was holding up, “. . . your sonic screwdriver . . .”

“This one? The one I am holding? That sonic screwdriver? Not another one that I don't know about? And why do you have the vortex manipulator? I'm checking the travel history on that later, you know, and I'd better not find any unauthorized jaunts!”

“Get a grip! I made a call and I stand by it! Now there are two of us, at liberty and not being chased by Roland's interior decorating. We stand a much better chance of finding Roland and saving Bog than if I left you up there!”

“You should have saved Bog! Because he's up there being _tortured_ because I popped into his life! He doesn’t deserve this!”

“But I saved _you_ , so let's just move on!”

“You shouldn't have!”

“Why _not_?”

“ _Because I'm not important_!”

The sisters had been pacing around the empty lot light boxers squaring off in the ring. Dawn stopped dead, looking like she had been slapped.

“Why would you even say that--” Dawn began, anger making her voice tremble.

“It's the truth,” the Doctor said, bringing her hand down sharply as if to press her claim more firmly into reality, “I've done things that can't be fixed, can't be made up for. You're upset because I lied to you? Wait until I start telling the truth because you're going to just _love_ me then! I have destroyed so many things, so many people—I have brought down kingoms, burned down entire planets! Maybe I did it for the right reasons, maybe I did it to save someone, but that doesn't make any of it right. So when you have to make a choice between pulling me or an innocent man from the fire just remember that I am not the sister you remember, that there is blood on my hands . . . _and_ _let me burn_.”

“You . . .” Dawn sniffed hard, her eyes sparkling with tears, “You are an _idiot_.”

The Doctor rocked back under the impact of Dawn slamming into her for a hug.

“Listen,” Dawn held her sister tight, ignoring her faint protest at being hugged, “I don't know what you've done, but you're my sister. You kept me safe for so long. I look into your eyes and see so much pain that I ache with it too. You're my sister and you are important.”

She shoved her sister away.

“So just shut up and start thinking about how to save Bog.”

Dawn turned on her heel, grabbed Sunny by the hand, and headed back to the TARDIS without waiting for an answer from her sister.

* * *

 

“You had to go and start all of this,” Roland sighed the sigh of a man who has long suffered under unfair circumstances, “Coming between me and my buttercup.”

“Start what? I don't even know you people!”

“Oh, to be so chronologically impaired!” Roland shook his head sadly, allowing his hair to bounce softly across his forehead, “It's amazing what a human—or a human mindset—can ignore. The effort I've put into averting all of this . . . and even so your time lines have been bouncing off each other, resisting my alterations.”

The process to accelerate Bog's transformation from human to Cheem was over, but the relief of it was short lived. It hurt even to breathe, his ribs stabbing and his lungs burning with each breath he drew. He was nearly wild with thirst and his concentration was shot. He just wanted to slide free of the wall and collapse on the floor, which looked cool and inviting. He did not want to continue to hang there, forced to look at the portraits of Roland decorating the room. 

The only thing he wanted to look at less right now was a mirror.

“Time lines?”

“Oh, come now! You must remember meeting her at least once before!”

The memory of the night he had been drunk and fell into a bush floated through Bog's head. He remembered pink high tops and impatient purple fingernails tapping on a watch. And, of course, the guitar he had found next to him when he woke up and ended up keeping when no one else laid claim to it.

But that was years ago.

Of course, that didn't really matter if a time machine was involved.

“Perhaps the face is throwing you off,” Roland waved a hand in an elegant circle and the portraits slid along the walls, disappearing and being replaced with new ones, “It is so hard to keep track of the faces, isn't it?”

The new pictures were the ones Bog had seen in the store's display window. There was the one of the Doctor, directly across from Bog, and portraits of various other women one either side.

Bog was honestly surprised that Roland had been able to tear himself away from a mirror long enough to paint anyone else.

“Anybody seem familiar?”

Bog stared blankly at Roland.

“Hm. Don't you get it yet? These are all _her_. Every face she's worn. Honestly, you two are destined to meet and yet you know nothing about her! Meanwhile, I am attentive to every detail and yet--!”

Roland snatched the portrait of the Doctor off the wall and smashed it onto the floor, breaking apart its wooden frame. For a moment Roland's facade slipped again, his hair tussled and his teeth bared. He looked up at Bog with a look of complete hatred.

“And yet she always chooses _you_!”


	17. Chapter 17

“What about this one?” Roland stepped over the twisted wreckage of the smashed painting and indicated another canvas that had been concealed behind the picture of the Doctor, “ring any bells? Rustle any leaves?”

“That's . . . Dawn?”

Bog figured that keeping Roland talking helped delay the creation of an evil plant army and, more importantly, any more personal suffering on Bog's part. Bog was just too tired to consider the abstract thought of a plant army attacking the world for no discernible reason except for Roland's twisted amusement.

The painting did look just like Dawn. Fluffy yellow hair and energetically cheerful face.

“Wrong!” Roland waved a rebuking finger at Bog, “This lovely young lady, full of sunshine and love, is _obviously_ my buttercup.”

“That is _obviously_ Dawn.”

“I'm telling you it _isn't_. My buttercup and her sister are identical twins, you buffoon.”

“I have met them, you know. Noticed that they aren't. Aren't identical. Not in the least.”

“You've met them as they are _now_. This girl of bright-eyed wonder was the lady who ended up in the Time War. Breaks your heart, doesn't it? Thinking of that poor little thing caught in all that messy fighting. Then she died.”

Roland knocked the painting off the wall and it landed face-down on the floor. He walked along the wall to the next painting, treading on the fallen canvas as he did.

“And so innocence is lost to the cruelty of the universe and the shattered remains of a once radiant youth are packed up and sent home with accolades and medals for valor. Like a purple heart with a new face thrown in as a bonus.”

The woman in the painting was nothing like Dawn—or the Doctor's supposed first face, that is. She looked to be at least in her mid-thirties, as compared to Dawn's early twenties.

Also, this woman was Indian.

“Look,” Bog said tiredly, “I've kind of lost a lot of blood so I'm not very quick on the uptake right now, but . . . what?”

“Why must I be plagued with the tiny, ignorant brains of lesser beings?” Roland implored the ceiling before turning his gaze back to Bog with a look of deliberate condescension, “When a Time Lord dies they regenerate. If you're off wandering around on a battlefield there's no way to stabilize things when your genetics get put through a blender and things can get a little off model. So, new face. New brain. Old memories. Very simple.”

“Of course it is.”

“This broken little soul comes home to the loving embrace of her family. The family who had wanted to tuck her safely away with her sister, but instead she ran off to play soldier and got herself killed. There were reconciliations, hugs, all manner of touching emotional slop. Even her darling, dearest husband had come home. And like she was a changed woman, he was a changed man.”

“I'm hoping I pass out soon, honestly.”

“The war was ended, the lovely lady goes spinning off into the universe with reckless abandon, burning through face,” Roland knocked down the painting, “after face,” he knocked down the next one, “after face.”

He made his way around the room, knocking the paintings off the wall one by one until they were all laying on the floor.

“Trying to make a fresh start. To shake off the past, the fickle lady that she is. Me, I prefer to maintain a standard,” Roland gestured to his face, “the highest of standards. Everything she ever wanted me to be and yet she still discards me. For _you_ , of all primitive creatures!”

“I'd say you lost me but I wasn't really following to start with. I met the woman like five minutes ago and I'm not exactly enamored of the consequences so far.”

“Fixed point in time,” Roland went on, punctuating his narrative with dramatic hand gestures, “Boy meets girl. Girl tells boy about his roots and he ends up doing glorious things for his plant peers. Boy and girl fall in love, get married, have 2.5 kids. Well, maybe not the last part, but you get the point. It's a tale as old as time and it's a disgusting cliché.”

“To be honest, I'm not exactly keen on the Doctor. So let me go and you can get back to your obsessive stalking without having to worry about me.”

“Please,” Roland pressed his hand to his chest, “I've worked myself to the bone to prevent you two meeting. It's tied into her sister's release somehow so I arranged for plenty of danger to come my sweetheart's way. A few daleks here, a cyberman army or two there. I knew she's get herself out just fine, clever little thing, but it convinced her it just wasn't safe to wake up her dear baby sister. But she ended up doing it anyway and—ugh! _You_ make your entrance.”

“I really don't want to be hearing about your relationship problems. Have you ever considered that the lady just isn't interested in you anymore?”

Roland stared at Bog with total incomprehension.

“No,” Roland laughed away the idea, “No, before you came along it used to be her and me, rocketing around the universe, playing our game. She might have amused herself with you little mayflies, playing at friendship and humanity, but all of them passed. I was still the most important one in her life, her one, real companion throughout all of the universe and all of history. But _then_ this glorified potted plant comes along and for some reason her head is completely turned.”

“Look, I haven't even known her a whole day and I would hardly imagine her head as capable of being turned by anything less than than blunt force trauma.”

“Yes, because you haven't gotten to that part yet!”

“Right.”

“It happened, but then I made sure it didn't happen! I made sure that your happy, fluffy little meeting never happened. Then time went all to pieces and kept trying to shove you two together some other way. She knows, my buttercup knows that _something_ isn't right and she's been trying to get to the bottom of it, but I've kept her distracted. Yet _somehow_ you end up meeting. But I'll fix it. I'll change it.”

“I'm totally up for going home and losing her phone number.”

Something pinged softly.

“Hm, results are in.”

A console rose up in the center of the room. It was a sleek thing, a far cry from the patchwork console in the Doctor's TARDIS. This one was white with reflective silver trimming. Bog wondered if that was so Roland could catch glimpses of his own face while he worked.

“How frustrating,” Roland said after a brief study of a screen's readout, “I'm still having trouble cracking the code.”

“You tried your best. Guess it's time to call it a day.”

“It would seem that there is not only a genetic lock on it. It's recognized you as admin and has decided that only your genetic code and your mental profile can unlock it. Hm, dear, dear, I was so hoping I could kill you now.”

“Too bad.”

“I'm sure I can make it work.”

“ _Lovely_.

* * *

 

The Doctor frowned at the readout from the vortex manipulator.

“Why were you skipping around 1960s America for a week?”

“I thought we were working on a plan to save Bog,” Dawn sighed, “not prying into my activities.”

“I was checking the charge.”

“It was an accidental excursion. We got back as soon as we could.”

“What were you doing all that time?” the Doctor asked suspiciously.

“Oh, this and that. Caught some concerts. Partied with some celebrities. Tried to process that my sister is eight hundred years older than I thought.”

The Doctor dropped the vortex manipulator and crossed the room to rummage in a dented tool box. This conveniently placed her so that she was facing away from Dawn.

“I'm not mad. Well, I'm not boiling in a red-hot fury of indignant rage anymore. I'm still not happy with you, but I've calmed down enough to listen to whatever you have to say. And to hear the story of . . . what happened to mom and dad.”

 _Oh, little rising star,_ Dawn's sister had said, _I tried. You have to believe I tried. But I couldn't save them_.

Then the cloister bells had tolled and the discussion was shelved.

Dawn had run out of the TARDIS, shoving the words out of her head, refusing to accept them. She had fixed a smile on her face and ran like mad toward the next adventure. And she had kept running, headlong into the 1960s, right until the third day of their involuntary stay there when it all became too much to hold inside and she spilled the whole story out to Sunny.

He had been teaching her to climb trees at a park. Not an important park that showed up in the history books. Just a park somewhere with ducks swimming in a pond. A few of the ducks were actually an alien species, but Dawn figured they were close enough not to make much of a difference.

“I figured out pretty quick that I was better at climbing and acrobatic stuff because I was small,” Sunny was telling her, “I've got a good center of gravity. The advantage of being short is that my legs aren't so long that I get tangled up in my own feet. I was in all these gymnastic classes when I was a kid and my mom was always talking about how I'd end up going to the Olympics but that was just her bragging it up to her friends. I've always thought of it more as a survival skill than anything else.”

Sunny had climbed up the tree so fast and so easily that Dawn couldn't see how he had done it, so she made him come down and do it twice more. Then she tried to copy his moves and slammed her head into a branch.

“Usually it's my sister who ends up needing medical attention,” Dawn grumbled once they were finally in the tree, sheltered among the thick growth of spring leaves.

“Heh, every family has one of those. My mom likes to say that my brother Josh broke three arms.”

“I'm assuming he didn't actually have three arms?”

“Nope. He broke his left, his right, then his left again. One time by falling like three feet into soft sand.”

“When we were ten my sister broke her leg when she tripped in the middle of an empty room with a perfectly level floor. Even she wasn't sure how she did it, but she insisted for years that it had been invisible aliens and we both researched every kind of race and species with invisibility and camouflage abilities and got so interested that when we went to the academy we coauthored a paper on the subject. I wanted to call it something like “Exposing the Hidden Enemies” but my sister said no one would get the joke since most of the races we discussed in the paper were rather shy and not at all violent.”

“But they did break her leg. That's pretty vicious.”

“That was my exact argument! It nearly swayed her, too.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Just the two of us. You have six brothers, right? That sounds . . . _crowded_.”

“Totally. The family joke is that there was no space for me to grow, all my older brothers had filled it already. They're all taller than I am. I got used to being randomly picked up by my brothers just because they thought it was cool that they could.”

“What about your parents?”

“Both taller than I am. I'll forever be their 'little boy,'” Sunny wiggled his fingers to make air quotes, “Mom's a welder and dad runs a little Cajun catering business. Mom used to be a backup dancer for a whole lot of different bands, but after she had my oldest brother she decided welding was steadier work. I get all my moves from her. We all do. You should see us at family reunions, we have a whole hip hop routine.”

“That sounds . . . amazing . . .”

That was when Dawn had started crying and told Sunny that her parents were gone, that they had been dead and dust for centuries and she hadn't even known until that day. Just a little while before she had been looking forward to seeing them again and telling them all about her adventures rattling around in an obsolete TARDIS.

For a little while she cried and hated her sister for lying.

Now, back in the TARDIS, watching the stiff set of her sister's shoulders, Dawn was ready to hear the story.

“After we save Bog, like the foliage in distress that he is, you have to tell me what you've been doing. Eight hundred years, that's a lot of adventures. Or misadventures. No wonder this TARDIS is such a wreck. Have you even been doing maintenance on it or do you just wait until something explodes and sets the room on fire?”

“You'll want to leave,” the Doctor said without turning around, “Once you know everything you'll want to leave.”

“You don't--”

“You think I'm still the same inside. Still your happy, kind sister. But there's nothing left of her but some old photographs.”

“Well, we'll see.”

“I am super uncomfortable listening to this,” Sunny called from the other side of the console room.

“Why did you bring your date back here?” the Doctor grumbled, “didn't you do enough kissing on your little excursion? What are you keeping him around for?”

“I might want to kiss him again,” Dawn grinned.

“Doesn't that get tedious?”

“Nah, Sunny is a good kisser.”

“I am going to die,” Sunny groaned, “I hope that I die.”

* * *

 

Bog had fallen into a haze of exhaustion, too uncomfortable to sleep, but too tired to stay awake. He watched in a detached way as some sort of electronic device was assembled, cables snaking between it and him. Roland's voice rose and fell in smug tones but Bog couldn't wake himself up enough to listen.

A hitch in Roland's smooth voice sparked a tiny bit of interest in Bog, but not enough for him to try and force his eyes full open.

“You really need to moisturize more often. Winter is murder on the skin,” a familiar voice said close to Bog's ear, the breath of their words touching his face. A bottle was put to his lips and water poured into his dry mouth. He almost choked before he remembered how to swallow.

“Took you long enough,” He said when the bottle was empty and his eyes focused enough to let him see the Doctor's face floating in front of him like a dream, “I can feel myself getting uglier by the second.”

“You're looking good, marsh man. The calvary is here.”

“Finally!” Roland's voice rang out, “I thought you were never going to show up, sugar! Now, before you go fiddling with any of those cables please be aware they're jacked into his nervous system and if you pull them out he'll flat line immediately.”

“What is this? What have you done?”

Bog felt the Doctor's fingers touching where the cables had been attached to his arm, driven in through the hardening bark of his skin. The sonic screwdriver whistled and glowed, but she needn't have bothered, Roland was eager to share the details of his project.

“I've turned him into an interface for his precious primrose. He's hooked up to my computers and I've got full access. The AI program is functioning, he template for the army has been complete and growth is beginning outside. Within the hour I'll have an army big enough to take this city. Within a day . . .? Probably enough to take the country.”

“Turn it off!”

“Sure thing, darlin'. Here's the switch.”

A small white box with a red button on it was tossed into the Doctor's hand.

“Just, before you press that you should probably know something: I've worked it out so that if you turn off my program you turn off your chia pet.”

“Explain.” the doctor grated out the order, button clutched in her hand.

“It's simply, dearest, really. If you want to stop my army then you have to turn off the program. But if you stop the program you hit the kill switch on the plant as well. You can either stop my army or save him. You can't do both. Now, think it over, but don't take too long. But I'm sure you'll decide quickly. We both know how good you are at making hard decisions.”

The smile he gave was vicious.


	18. Chapter 18

“Stop this now, Roland!”

“Darlin', _you've_ got the button. The program is set to run all by its lonesome and the only way to shut it off is that little button in your hand. I'm completely locked out. Couldn't do a thing even if I tried. This is entirely your call.”

Roland flourished his hand and gave a little bow to the Doctor.

He straightened up, looking slightly puzzled.

“Buttercup, not that my plans didn't anticipate you finding me but . . . how did you get here?”

“She was covered in dust from the wall she atomized,” Dawn appeared in Bog's line of sight, her glasses in place and hands in her pockets, “Turns out that your handy little nanotech interior automatically tries to find its way home and reassemble itself. An advanced trail of bread crumbs leading us back to you. Also, you still have your shields down from when I deactivated them last time.”

“Oh,” Roland looked disappointed, “I was expecting a little more effort on my sweetheart's part. It's not much of a rivalry if her little sister elbows in.”

“Don't mind me,” Dawn shrugged her shoulders, “I'm just the designated damsel in distress. In your head, anyway.”

“This is an eight-wheeler worth of third wheels,” Roland sighed.

“How are you doing, Boggy?” Dawn held his chin and tipped up his head so she could shine a small light in his eyes, “Responses are still good. You look all dried out, though. Drink plenty of water and, uh, hang in there.”

Bog was just grateful it wasn't a plant pun.

He wasn’t grateful for much else. He was on the edge of panicking because none of what was going on made any sense, he was in a great deal of pain, and he was being used to somehow take over the world. Or was it destroy the world? Roland had been a little vague about the specifics.

Bog was trying his best not to panic because if he did he was sure someone would point out the text on his shirt read ‘Don’t Panic’, and he wasn’t sure if he could take that.

Roland coughed politely to regain their attention and once all eyes were on him he smiled and continued his performance, “Now, now, enough of this lallygagging. You're on a deadline, remember?”

With a wave of his hands the walls shimmered, the blank white stretches giving way to a view of the park that the Doctor's TARDIS had been parked in earlier. The crumbled section of wall where the Doctor had been imprisoned flickered and buzzed, an disordered patch in the otherwise flawless projection of the outdoors.

Roland paused and shook his head regretfully at the crumbled wall before continuing.

“Lovely, wholesome little park,” he gestured to a small grouping of trees, “a space conveniently free of pavement and buildings. Nothing but a nice smooth piece of grass and trees and a sweet little pond for the ducks.”

Roland swung around to face his audience and flashed the smile of a man in an informical about to tell you that if you call now you would receive double the product _and_ a free set of measuring spoons.

“All in all, the ideal place to start growing a plant army in the middle of a city!”

Right on cue a sprouting plant pushed its way through the grass, it's massive size scaring off a dog that had been inspecting the shifting ground. More sprouts followed, the people walking through the park startled but laughing, coming up closer to see if the plants were real, snapping pictures with their phones.

“ _Humans_ ,” the Doctor muttered, dragging a hand down her face, “I hope the increased traffic on their twitter feed is worth possible death.”

“Don't be so hard on them,” Dawn said, looking up from her inspection of the cables trailing on the floor, “they don't—are they putting their baby right next to it to take pictures?”

The Doctor nodded dully.

“How have they survived as a species?” Dawn groaned.

“A mystery,” Roland said.

“Don't agree with me,” Dawn ordered, “It makes me want to shower.”

“As fun as this all is,” Roland said, his back to the rapidly growing plants, “you've go a schedule to keep to. About five minutes and we'll have a nice amount of wooden soldiers to march off into the streets, armed with an array of natural toxins and pointy sticks for general stabbing. Of course, they could always be stopped with large amounts of weedkiller, or setting everything on fire, but that would cause just as much damage as letting them rampage. Really, the only option is--”

Roland was abruptly cut off as he dropped to the floor in an undignified heap.

There was a small round patch stuck on the back of his neck and Sunny was standing over him looking apprehensive.

“I didn't kill him, did I?”

The Doctor rushed over, turned Roland face up and felt for a pulse in his neck.

“He's fine. How long have you been here? What did you--?”

“I've been here the whole time,” Sunny said in the resigned way of someone who was used to being constantly overlooked, “I found a box when Dawn sent me looking for stuff to track Roland. Some sort of knockout things. I read the label and was going to ask, but I never got a chance and then when he wouldn't shut up I kind of thought we'd all be happier if he took a nap.”

The Doctor examined the box, nodded, pulled out a second patch and stuck it in the middle of Roland's forehead, “Good. Dawn, you may keep Sunny.”

“Gee, _thanks_ ,” Sunny and Dawn said in disgusted unison.

“You're welcome, now find me something to tie him up with.”

“There are zip ties in my jacket pocket,” Bog tilted his head to where his leather jacket had been dropped to the floor after Roland removed it so he could take blood samples from Bog's arm.

“Why do you carry around zip ties?” the Doctor asked, pulling the items in question out of the jacket pocket.

“I work at a bar. Sometimes you need to make sure people stay put until the cops come and pick up their unruly carcasses.”

The Doctor fastened Roland's wrists together and then his ankles. Finished, she picked up the leather jacket again and played thoughtfully with the metal spikes on the shoulders.

“Are you going to unplug me now?” Bog prompted, watching the plants in the park unfurling leaves as they reached a height of roughly six feet, “Because I would really like to get down from here. Like, _now_.”

“It's not so simple as unplugging you,” Dawn held up one of the cables, “These are organic and integrated into your system and connecting you to the computer, which has become, well, basically a vital organ.”

“How vital?”

“Unplugging you would be like ripping out your heart.”

“And how are you going to fix it?”

“Well,” Dawn said slowly, tilting her head back and pointing her eyes away from Bog.

“We don't have a clue,” the Doctor said with characteristic bluntness.

“Okay . . . why are you wearing my jacket?”

Bog asked more to avoid thinking about the image of having his heart ripped out rather than any real interest.

“Because I'm nostalgic for when I wore a leather jacket. But mine never had spikes. Never thought of spikes. Why didn't I think of spikes? They send a very clear message of 'hands off unless you want multiple puncture wounds.”

“You used to wear a leather jacket?” Dawn asked, interested.

“I went through a phase. Or two. Now,” the Doctor clapped her hands together, “let's take a look at the computer.”

The Doctor pointed her sonic at the console and the walls flickered, the park being replaced with blocks of computer code. There were numbers, but also symbols like the ones Bog had seen the Doctor scribbling on a chalkboard. They were all round and intricate, like the inner workings of a watch.

“Marsh man, I need your help,”

“Sure, lemme just unhook myself.”

“Sarcasm is not helpful. Roland has rigged this up to follow his program, but you're still admin, your still the rightful owner and operator of this necklace. I'm going to take you back into the database while Dawn stays out here and works on disconnecting you.”

“But--!” Dawn looked up sharply from her study of the computer code, an objection on her lips.

“Just do it!' the Doctor snapped.

Dawn bowed her head and resumed her work.

“What, you mean go into that forest in my head again?” Bog asked, “Can't you at least get me down from this wall first?”

“Oh, yes,” the Doctor waved a hand and the wall shifted enough for Bog to slip free and collapse into a sitting position on the floor. The Doctor tossed him another bottle of water before he could ask for it, “I managed to hack the psychic interface, so the place is at our disposal.”

Trying and failing to unscrew the cap of the bottle, Bog couldn't help but look at his hands. They were twisted and root-like, knotting up at the joints, and covered with small twigs of new growth. The bottle still capped, Bog stared at his hands and asked, “How am I supposed to play the guitar like this?”

The words came out softer and sadder than he had intended them to.

The Doctor's small hands took his, the water bottle falling into his lap.

Light brown eyes were looking at him with an unshakable steadiness that spoke of large, immovable things, like ancient cliffs and burning stars, “This can be fixed.”

“It shouldn't have happened in the first place!” Bog jerked his hands free, “I would never have even been involved if you just left me alone! Your crazy ex thinks that I'm some sort of rival for your heart and I don't even like you!”

“Roland what now?” Dawn's head popped back up.

“According to Lord Hair Gel your sister and I are destined in the stars, or a fixed point in time, or whatever. I think his hair bleach has eaten away his brain. But that's what he thinks and that's why he did this . . . all this . . .”

Dawn's eyebrows had shot up into her hairline, “Is this _true_?”

“No!” the Doctor snapped, “of course not!”

“Look me in the eye, sister mine, and say that again.”

“Why should I have to? It's ridiculous.”

“You _know_ something!”

“Stop.”

“Tell me! It might be important!”

“It isn't!”

The Doctor stood up, pulling off the jacket and throwing it over Bog's head before she stomped off to the other side of the room and pretended to be looking at the computer code.

Sunny walked over to Bog and picked up the bottle of water, twisting the cap off and handing the bottle back, “Dude, I have no idea what's going on.”

“I'm a plant now,” Bog replied, taking a drink.

“No, actually, picked up that much.”

“How bad do I look?”

“Uh . . .”

“If you say I need to moisturize then I will strangle you with these cables.”

“Mmm,” Sunny bit his lips and attempted to look innocent, “Well, the—the pieces of skin are kind of . . . messed up.”

Bog looked down at the dried out scraps of skin clinging to the dark shape of his arms. He could still see bits of the tattoo patterns visible. He rubbed at his arms to discard the useless skin, but quickly stopped, unnerved by the alien texture of his arms.

Like she had read his mind, the Doctor spoke up, “I recognized your tattoos as a corrupted Cheem crest. I assume the patterns had been passed down in your family.”

“Yeah. There's some old manuscripts. Illuminated. I used them as a basis for my sleeves.”

“Then you'll have the references to recreate them.”

“So you _will_ be able to put me right?”

“We need to get started now. Get into the program and put you back in control. Ready?”

“No.”

“Excellent. We'll begin. Dawn, try to unplug Bog and keep the plant soldiers from doing anything too terrible. And try not to get distracted by kissing and things.”

“Have a nice date,” Dawn replied haughtily.

The Doctor's small, dark eyebrows drew down low over her eyes in an impressive glare that would have made most squirm when targeted by it. Dawn merely rolled her eyes and asked Sunny to help her pry off the top of the console.

The Doctor couched down in front of Bog again, reaching out to put her fingertips against his temples.

“Hah,” Bog said, “Can't believe a girl is actually going to touch this face.”

“Look, if you want me to comment on faces you've got another thing coming. For one thing, we've established I'm terrible at faces. For another, I've seen a lot weirder faces than a Cheem's. My judgment is skewed. Which, I suppose, is why I think your face is fairly inoffensive.”

“I'm flattered.”

“At least you've still got your cheekbones and blue eyes. Stupid blue eyes. Now,” the Doctor pinched his cheeks despite their rough texture, “think of the forest and don't let your thoughts wander.”


	19. Chapter 19

“My mom!”

A layer of dead leaves crunched under Bog's feet like he had just jumped down and landed in the middle of the forest. The moment he found himself back in the database he realized that the plant army was minutes away from ransacking the city.

The city where his mom lived.

“We've got to warn her before they start--”

The ground tilted up sharply, knocking Bog off his feet and sending him tumbling off into the branches of the trees, smashing through the canopy and falling into the sky. There was nothing to hold onto, he was just falling upwards, the blue of the atmosphere thinning and giving away to the dark of space. Everything was black except for the stars, that burned steady and did not twinkle here in the emptiness.

One star did flicker, though. It flickered orange and red and Bog fell toward it, or was pulled toward it. Something in it called to him. The star got closer and closer until it filled up every corner of Bog's vision and the sky was red, fire rained down and the ruins of a city, a broken wall moving with fire and shadows, the stone of it etched with the words, _no more_.

A stretch of empty sand.

A red button.

A hard choice.

An impossible choice.

The star started shrinking down again, but into a rectangle instead of a circle.

_I have to warn them! I have to warn them to get out before--!_

A woman stood in a dark room before an open door that cut a rectangle of fire into the blackness. When she looked over her shoulder at the dark room the red light showed her profile and the collar of a worn leather jacket.

“Or maybe they should all burn. No exceptions.”

It was the Doctor's second face.

But she was old. Her dark face deeply lined, her thick, black eyebrows sunk low over a pair of weary black eyes. Eyes that were full of sorrow and resignation, and yet were still younger than the eyes of the Doctor that Bog knew.

“You can't do this!”

The Doctor's eyes had been turned toward Bog but were looking past him and he followed her gaze to . . . Roland.

Roland with wild, desperate eyes, his clothes worn and covered in dust, reaching out and begging, “You can't! All of them, our whole world! Your parents, your sister--”

“Our world is ripping apart the universe! It's shredding history! There are no innocents here, this war is not justified, there's only blood and corruption! No more, Roland, no more!”

“Love, please,” Roland approached her and gently took her face in his hands, “Please, look at me. Say you won't do this. If you love me, say you won’t do this.”

The Doctor pulled away, looking out at the red sky, holding her gaze steady on it, refusing to turn back and look at Roland.

“It's got to end,” She whispered, “No more.”

“Oh, darlin',” Roland stepped up behind her, tracing his fingers across her neck and tucking a strand of black hair back in a gesture of genuine affection, “I can't let you do that.”

A knife, already dyed red in the light of the burning sky, was raised . . .

A hard slap across Bog's face knocked away the dark room, the red sky, the sudden burst of golden light. Instead he was back in the forest, knocked down into the damp moss.

“I said _don't_. _Don't_ let your thoughts wander. Why does nobody ever listen when I say don't wander off?

Holding his throbbing cheek, Bog stared at the Doctor, “He stabbed you!”

“He wasn't entirely unjustified.”

“He stabbed you in the back! You—you trusted him and he--”

“Psychic feedback. Trace memories. It happened a long time ago.”

“You were going to—he tried to stop you from--”

“Enough,” the Doctor stood over Bog, “No more letting your mind wander. In here you're in charge and if you're not careful we could get caught up reliving the past. Focus on what we're here to do: override Roland's program.”

“Yeah,” Bog said, wanting to ask a dozen questions and forcing himself to push them all aside, “but we're calling my mother the second we get out of here.”

“This isn't even going to take a minute of real time, so relax.”

“Fine,” Bog pushed himself off the damp ground, “Where do we start—hey! I'm normal again!”

“What a boring thing to be happy about. It's not real.”

“In my head, I know,” Bog looked at his hands, his hands which had fingernails again, “It's still nice to look normal again. Not feel like I'm dying. How long is going to take to really fix me, when this is done?”

“Hard to say. Especially if we don't hurry up and get this done.”

“So sorry for wasting a fraction of a second discussing my future wellbeing. Fine, we do we need to do?”

“Get rid of that.”

Bog turned around to look where the Doctor was pointing and found himself looking at a twisted wreckage of machinery wrapped around a tree. More than that, it had sent out metal tendrils to choke the other trees, a messy criss-crossing of shiny metal weaving a cage around the small section of forest Bog and the Doctor were standing in. They were trapped there.

“He didn't exactly go for precision,” the Doctor remarked, waving her screwdriver over the machine, “he just smashed it in here. Which—as he probably knew—will make it harder to extract. It's damaged the pendants programming even more and replaced random sections of it.”

“What do we do? Scan for viruses?”

“We hack out the big pieces, burn the rest, then see if we can reset the program without erasing the data,” the Doctor reached into her pocket and pulled out an ax.

“Did you seriously have an ax in your pocket?”

“This is all in your head. Think creatively,” the Doctor tossed him the ax, “if you can chop out the main program we should be able to slip through and regain access to stop the plant army. We can clean up the rest later.”

Bog caught the ax and inspected the machine embedded in the tree, “We're going to have to take this whole tree down. And, hey, there's something else in here . . .”

With the edge of the ax's blade Bog scraped away a layer of moss and bark to reveal a globe of amber the size of his head. He rubbed his thumb over it, feeling the texture, trying to clean it enough to see if it had any bugs or leaves trapped inside.

“Wait,” the doctor touched the amber with her fingertips, “It's . . . it's part of the AI program. Or something that was install at the same time. It's trying to say something.”

“Say something? It's a piece of fossilized tree sap.”

“It's a mental representation of an ancient alien program! Ask it a question. It should recognize you enough to give you information.”

“Okay. Hey, amber, what are you?”

A tint of red fell over the forest and Bog started to step back and see what was causing it.

The Doctor slammed her hand over his and held it to the amber, “No, it's answering the question. Just wait.”

Fire was crackling in the sky.

“Isn't this one of yours?” Bog asked, looking sideways at the Doctor, “because I totally wasn't letting my thoughts wander.”

“No, it isn't mine. Look, the trees are on fire, too. The forest is burning. This is the past. Your people's past, four hundred years ago when the Time War cracked time and burned throughout the universe. It came here to earth—it went everywhere.”

The forest was truly on fire, the glow of fire barely visible in the thick, black smoke. There were bodies burning on the ground, turning into ashes like logs of wood. The remains of faces looked up at Bog and he saw they were Cheem.

“But this is Germany. The Black Forest,” Bog protested, surprised at being able to breathe when smoke was choking the air, “It never burned down.”

“Sh!” the Doctor pointed to their right and they saw a Cheem woman coming through the smoke. She was carrying a pink stone the shape of a seed.

Around her was a clear bubble of air and she walked through the flames with her head high, glancing neither right nor left, and never down at the bodies she stepped over. Tears streamed down her face. Her face was ragged and gray, patches of smooth white showing through where the bark had peeled off, like a poplar tree. It was hard to tell with a person whose face was covered in tree bark, but Bog thought she looked young, no more than twenty or so.

The Cheem woman was walking toward a gapping hole in the forest where the fire had exhausted its supply of trees to burn and lingered in embers beneath the ashes and smoke. Above it was a hole in the sky.

“What?” Bog asked, glancing back at the Doctor.

“The Time War,” she said, her hand trembling slightly where it lay on top of Bog's, “It's torn through the sky and embers of the war blew out into the forest. I think she's going to try to close it.”

“Even four hundred years ago . . . somebody would have mentioned this in the history books!”

“Not if it never happened.”

The Doctor watched, face impassive, while the Cheem woman expanded the bubble of protection around herself, pushing it toward the sky. The Doctor didn't even flinch as the woman dropped to her knees with the effort of her task with the seed still raised above her head.

The Doctor's hand was squeezing Bog's so tight his bones were grinding painfully together and he put his other hand on top of hers. She looked quickly down at their hands, for a second, then back to the scene unfolding before them. Their backs against the tree, hands on the amber.

The fire was pushed back toward the hole in the sky. Bog's breath was caught in his throat as he watched the excruciatingly slow process of pushing back the fire, taking back the forest inch by inch, the force of it pushing the Cheem woman down so that she struggled to lift her head.

The primrose stone burned bright in her hands.

So bright, so hot, that Bog could see smoke coming from the woman's hands as they clasped the gem still harder.

Clasped the gem, held it aloft, pushed back the fire, protected her home.

Until the gem cracked.

The primrose broke in pieces and the protection failed, and fire consumed the woman as she screamed.

“God!” Bog looked away.

The Doctor didn't.

She watched throughout with her impassive face, but when Bog looked away from the burning Cheem woman he could see the brightness of pain in the Doctor's eyes.

He took her hand in his, pulling away from the amber, letting the nightmare around them slip away and the cool dark of the forest return.

“You stopped that,” He said, “You sacrificed everything to stop that.”

“I didn't stop it soon enough. I sacrificed nothing. I lived. My sister lived. And it was a long time ago. It doesn't matter. But the Time War ended and history tried to heal but there were scars. The Cheem lived here, but their forest, their kingdom is forgotten, never really was, the memory of it broken with the primrose seed. Are you going to give me my hand back?”

Bog dropped her hand, “Ah. Sorry.”

“It's fine,” the Doctor hunched her shoulders and looked at the amber.

“The yellow stone,” Bog said, “it's Cheem blood bound into one of the shards of the primrose seed. To keep all the pieces together.”

“That makes sense,” the Doctor nodded, “also good to know. Even fragmented, the pendant is reinforced by Cheem blood. That should give you enough power to override this thing. Forget hacking it up.”

“Darn.”

“We use the amber to overpower it. Hands back on that amber, see if you can get the AI program to show you what the plant army is doing.”

“Yeah, right, because that sound so simple,” Bog put his hands on the amber and thought of the park. Thought of it catching on fire the way that the forest of the Cheem had, “Oh, okay, I think we're in real time again.”

“What?”

“I can see—I'm looking through the eyes of the plant soldiers and—this is really confusing because I think I'm seeing through a whole lot of eyes at once--”

“What's _happening_?”

“They've, uh, uprooted themselves. They're going—no!”

Bog was leaping through multiple points of view and he was dizzy from the choppy barrage of images, but when he saw blood he managed to hold onto that point of view and see what was happening.

“It's stabbed a man!”

“Make it stop!”

“I don't know how!”

“Just do it! You're in control here! Tell it to stop!”

Bog could feel the plant soldier, almost like he were inhabiting its body, but at the same time he could feel the amber in his hands and see the Doctor out of the corner of his eye.

He could feel the wooden spike on his—the soldier's arm.

Feel warm blood on it.

“No!”

_He saw a small body laying on the dusty ground in another country, bleeding out from the bullet wound in his chest. Staring dumbly at the blood, gun still in his hands._

Bog did something. He had no idea what, except that it was definitely something. The wooden spike snapped off the soldier's arm, leaving it embedded in the man's shoulder. The soldier caught the man and guided his fall to the ground.

Somebody was shouting and Bog turned the soldier's head just in time to see someone swinging a shovel toward him.

The soldier's eyes went dark and Bog was completely back in the forest, only still standing because the Doctor had caught him as he reeled back, arms around his waist, trying to keep up upright even though she was half his size.

“Good,” the Doctor patted his back, “Very good. Do more of that, please.”


	20. Chapter 20

“Yoohoo! Us again! Having a little problem with non-native plant toxins! Thought you might be able to help!”

Aura Plum opened the front door of the cottage, looking suspiciously around for any sign of the dark-haired Time Lord. But there was only the other one, the blonde one, looking cheerful and slightly out of breath.

“You parked on my marigolds.”

Dawn glanced back at the TARDIS, “Yeeeah . . . sorry about that. Kind of an emergency, bit of a rush, sort of an army of evil plant soldiers wrecking havoc in the city, stabbing people and spreading some nasty toxins around. Sort of need to whip up an all-purpose antitoxin and I remembered you had a pretty fantastic lab setup, so . . . hi.”

“Plant army?” Aura folded her arms, rings and bangles catching the light, “How did that happen, pray tell?”

“Someone that shouldn't have sort of got hold of the primrose pendant and used it to grown an army bent on causing destruction and chaos. Very unfortunate. We got the pendant back, though!”

“Where is it? And where is Broden?”

“Uh, Bog has the pendant. He's with my sister. Trying to shut down the army. We were helping, but the toxin situation is kind of becoming critical so we got sidetracked. He's perfectly safe.”

“Yeah,” Sunny called, dragging out a plastic-shrouded form from the TARDIS, “ _We_ 're the ones running around trying to get samples without getting stabbed. Dawn, I feel like a grave robber over here.”

“Help you in a minute!” Dawn assured him.

“I'm calling Broden,” Aura started to shut the door, “I'll see what he says before I let either of you back into my house.”

“Yeah, wait, wait, wait,” Dawn waved her hands until Aura paused with the door still open a crack, “He's kind of in the middle of a thing. The primrose pendent? Kind of a massive database of Cheem history. He's a bit . . . _plugged in_ right now, trying to stop the army. Psychic thing, you know?”

The door swung all the way open, “The pendant is a database?”

“Yup! You'll have a lot of fun going through it, I bet. _After_ we stop the city from getting poisoned, yeah?”

“I suppose you'd better come in,” Aura sighed, waving for them to follow.

“Yippee,” Dawn ran over to Sunny and helped him pick up the body, “I do love a good scientific collaboration!”

“Don't touch anything!” Aura called from inside the house.

“Well, that's not fun at all.”

* * *

 

 “You need to stop them from spreading any more toxins.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“It's important.”

“I know that.”

“Then maybe you should hurry up and stop it.”

“It's a little hard with you jabbering in my ear!”

Bog was still getting the hang of being split up among multiple locations. He was standing in the forest, but he was also flicking through hundreds of sets of eyes, trying to find soldiers in immediate danger of harming people and stopping them. It was tedious searching and wrenching control away from the AI was difficult.

As well, there was more pressure than ever after the Doctor told Bog that Dawn had been unable to find a way immediately unplug him and had to redirect her efforts to stopping the spread of toxins. Removing him from the machine would have to be done later, when there was time to do it slowly and carefully. In the meantime it was on Bog to halt the army.

“Stop channel surfacing and work on reclaiming the AI entirely. You control that, you control the whole army, not just one soldier at a time.”

“I already tried doing that, remember? It didn't work.”

“Then try again! Try harder! Try _better_!”

Bog ground his teeth together and shut his eyes, turning off the rapid changing of channels and giving himself a moment to breathe. The Doctor was right, this wasn't working and he was getting tired. Just shutting his eyes for a moment to think made his mind attempt to shut down and sleep.

A smack to the side of Bog's head made him come to with a start.

“AI. Override it. Now.”

“Wee monster,” Bog mumbled under his breath, shaking his head and readjusting his hands over the amber, trying to keep his rising temper in check. There must have been some sort of mental bleed-through because although the Doctor did not look it, Bog knew she was feeling desperate and helpless, prompting him to remark, “You're not used to letting anyone else drive, are you?”

“Just—just do the thing!”

“Why do you keep assuming I know what I'm doing?”

“Call up the AI,” the Doctor closed her eyes, taking a moment to compose herself before adding, “ _please_.”

“Since you asked nicely,” Bog rolled his head back dramatically and shouted up at the trees, “Summoning the mighty black cloud of death currently piloting a small army of plant people! You there? We need to talk.”

“No need to shout, I'm right here!”

Bog almost took his hands off the amber when he heard Roland's voice.

The Doctor automatically smacked his hands back down.

Shifting awkwardly around, Bog saw that Roland was indeed there, looking disapprovingly at the various forms of nature that were daring to deface the bright polish of his shoes

“He's supposed to be sleeping it off!” Bog looked accusingly at the Doctor.

“Oh,” Roland waved a hand and laugh a superior little laugh, “I'm not actually Roland! I'm merely a reflection of his brilliant mind and exemplary face.”

“You're the reprogrammed AI,” the Doctor looked disgusted, “I'm not even slightly surprised. Just really, really tired.”

“I'm here to keep you from cheating,” the AI said with a wink, “The rules were set out, sweetheart, and there are still only two choices. You either push the button . . . or you don't. Save countless lives or your precious houseplant. That's it, those are all your options, sweetpea. Anything else is just wasting your time. Oh, and putting thousands of lives at risk.”

Bog looked away from Roland's beaming face and asked the Doctor, “So we have to get past him, then? I don't suppose he's punchable?”

“Try giving him an order.”

“Hey, Marilyn Monroe, turn off the plant army.”

“No can do!” Roland shook his head cheerfully.

“Unplug me from the program.”

“Completely impossible!”

“Um,” Bog hesitated, trying to think of another order worth trying.

“Send him away,” the Doctor ordered.

“Can I do that?”

“You can try.”

“Beat it, prince smarmy.”

Roland vanished without even flashing a parting smile.

“Huh,” the Doctor said, hand on her hip—her other hand still on Bog's, “wish that worked in reality too.”

“In a perfect world . . .” Bog nodded in wistful agreement, “Anyway, if I try and deal directly with the AI I'm dealing with him?”

“Essentially. He's a layer of protection that you have to get past. Your previous attempts to override the AI you tried doing it roundabout, through the part specifically controlling the soldiers. This was direct contact with the new interface.”

“Lovely. What are our options, aside from the dumb ones we're not using?”

The Doctor walked away and sat down on a a tree stump, elbows on her knees and chin propped up on her fists. She stared hard at the empty space of the small clearing. Her face and hands were covered with dirt and grease even though she was in a strictly mental plane of existence and could probably look how she pleased. Bog wondered what that said about her, that her clothing was still dusty, boots scuffed, and hair stuck up in tufts.

Bog left her to her thinking.

He decided to try again at switching off the part of the AI controlling the plants. When that didn't work he tried going through the interface directly.

The next thing he knew the Doctor was guiding his sudden descent to the ground so that he didn't hit his head on anything. Roland's laughter over the failed attempt was still ringing in his ears. The Doctor shoved him around so he was sitting with his back to the tree and dropped herself next to him.

“That way is going to kill you without doing anybody any good.”

“I'm beginning to see that,” Bog replied, his heart racing and ears ringing, “I really hate that AI. I liked it more when it was just a black cloud of death. What do we try next, then?”

The Doctor was staring at the clearing again.

At a box, a couple of feet tall, topped with a large red gem the size of Bog's fist.

“Big red . . . button? Is that supposed to be the kill switch?” Bog asked, still breathing hard, “That better not be the kill switch.”

“It's in my pocket, in reality,” the Doctor said, not taking her eyes off the box, “I've got my hand on it now. I could press it this moment if you told me to.”

“I'm telling you not to!” Bog said quickly, “Definitely not!”

“I assumed. But that's our option, so far as I can see. Don't press the button. Press the button. Save one or save many.”

“He's doing this on purpose,” Bog realized, “This is because--”

“I know why he's doing it,” the Doctor cut him off, “and I might even consider him justified if he didn't keep dragging other people into it! And he knows what choice I'll make, he knows that I'll talk and I'll talk until I have you pressing the button and think it's your own idea, that you're a noble martyr through your own choice. I might as well push the button myself because your death would be on me anyway. Maybe even I'll believe it for a second, the noble philosopher, making hard choices for the greater good, standing on the high moral ground of her principles.”

Coat dragging over the roots of the tree, the Doctor rolled to her feet and went to walk around the box, leaving Bog at the base of the tree, listening dumbly to her ranting.

“And you were only picked and shoved into this dilemma because, apparently, in some aborted time line we would have known each other and that would have been important somehow. Us knowing each other is important, something comes from that which contributes to a fixed point in time so . . . I can't let you die! Because that would break a fixed point in time and have all of time happening at once and that is never fun, let me tell you!”

Clouds were rolling across the sky, casting the clearing into darker shadows, the sunlight outlining the clouds with a halo of red fire.

“If . . .” Bog found his throat was dry and he had to swallow hard before he could continue, “If I died . . . that would save my mom. My aunt Aura. I can't wrap my head around the whole city, but . . . my mom. My band. My boss at the bar.”

“It would,” the Doctor's words were blunt, “it would save them. Everyone like them. But, time--”

“I can't imagine that I'm so important to history that it can't do without me,” Bog laughed, “I'm just some rock star wannabe that no one will ever hear about. And we met. Maybe you'll do something important because you met me, and that's what was meant to happen. Maybe you take my guitar and use it to smash Roland over the head and save the world.”

“It isn't . . . it's not impossible.”

“Then there _is_ a choice. I'm not saying I've made up my mind about it, but that's . . . still a choice. A choice that might, well, make up for some things.”

Some things that could never be undone, or even fixed. But maybe it could just be a little better. Make up for that little boy bleeding out on the floor, dead by Bog’s hand, because he thought the room had been cleared, but . . .

The Doctor dropped back down next to him and leaned her forehead on his shoulder. Bog rather thought there might have been more mental bleed-through and that she had picked up on his train of thought.

“Stop being noble. Being dead doesn’t help anybody.”

“I'm really not. It's just . . . a hard choice. And somebody has to make it.”

“You should never have been put in this position.”

“All because I might have known you someday, huh? I assume the whole, um, romantic angle is just in Roland's head?”

“I can only suppose,” the Doctor shrugged, still leaning on Bog, her fingers playing over the wrinkles in the sleeve of his jacket, “Anything is possible, but some things are more unlikely than others.”

“How unlikely? Because I've believed six impossible things before breakfast today, so, I've not really got a good grasp of probability right now.”

The Doctor lifted her head and squinted at him with an expression of deep confusion, “Sorry, been a stressful day, have to forgive me for not quite keeping up . . . but for a second there it sounded like . . .”

The Doctor struggled to find the proper words, waving her hands slowly around as if she might snatch something out of the air to help her complete the question.

“. . . flirting?”

Bog burst into laughter even as his face turned hot with embarrassment.

“Knew I was wrong,” the Doctor folded her arms and shifted herself to sit forward facing, “This is awkward.”

“I'm sorry!” Bog wheezed through his laughter, “Your face was just amazing! You looked like you were in agony!”

“I am _now_.”

Bog covered his face with his hands, still choking on his laughter, “You should push that button now, I want to die.”

“Glad to oblige.”

The Doctor began to stand up.

Bog grabbed her arm and she fell back down again, tangled up on the ground next to him, their faces inches apart.

“Look,'” He said, aware that his pale complexion must have been red as a tomato at that point, “It's either the end of the world or the end of me, so . . .”

“So?” the Doctor asked, looking thoroughly lost.

“So, um, I'm going to do something stupid.”

“How stupid--?” the Doctor was asking when Bog leaned down and kissed her.


	21. Chapter 21

“Oh.”

The single syllable ended the brief kiss

The Doctor appeared to be experiencing a full system shutdown of sorts. Her eyes were wide and staring, her face blank. Bog's own face was burning and it only got worse when he saw the Doctor's expression. Suddenly he remembered that in reality he was covered in bark and even when he hadn't been he had still been comparable to something that had been scraped off the bottom of a shoe.

Bog moved away, finding a new seat on the tree roots, then hid his face in his hands.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, “Let's . . . just get back to deciding if I should kill myself or not. Because that is looking like a good idea right now.”

The Doctor hadn't moved. Bog wasn't sure if she had blinked.

“You okay?” Bog asked, lifting his face from his hands.

“I . . . I don't understand.”

She did blink now, slowly shading her bright eyes, then revealing them again. They were like the amber in the trees, but subtly darkening toward the edges of the iris, and so much more alive. The heaviness had gone out of them, though they still looked impossibly deep, like she too was bigger on the inside, her small frame holding so much more than it possibly should have been able to.

“I think it's pretty clear I've made a fool of myself,” Bog hunched up his shoulders, applying himself to the impossible task of trying to make himself smaller, “I'm sorry for . . . that.”

“That isn't the problem. The problem is that I don't understand why you did it at all.”

“Because I'm an idiot.”

“Nothing wrong with being an idiot. I'm an idiot. An idiot with a big blue box and a screwdriver, running around the universe getting into trouble. You are . . . you are someone who had a future that I might have taken away from you.”

Bog looked away from her, trying to pass his answer off with a laugh, “I haven't had a future in a long time.”

“History says otherwise,” the Doctor was examining his face, searching for answers, “Already you've reconnected with the past of your family, something that's been lost for hundreds of years. It will make a huge difference to the Cheem of earth, to have their heritage restored to them.”

“I'm a worthless drunk that wallows in the bottom of a bottle feeling sorry for myself. I'm less than worthless. If I disappeared right now, even without a plant army factored in, the world would be a better place for my absence.”

“You're a person who is willing to consider sacrificing their own life to save the people you care about.”

“Only because it isn't worth anything to me or anyone else. Hardly a sacrifice.”

“And you pretend not to care because caring hurts,” the Doctor said thoughtfully, head tilted to one side, her eyes still staring at Bog while he stared at the dirt. When he risked looking up he found her stare, while still confused, had softened.

“It really does hurt, doesn't it? You know that, don't you? It's easier to be selfish.”

“I _am_ selfish,” the Doctor corrected, finally looking away, the light of her eyes disappearing in shadows, “I'm a greedy old monster that's smashed her way through life without consideration toward anyone but herself. And I've smashed your life up too. You don't like me. You hate me. I don't mind. Lots of people hate me.”

“I don't . . . don't think that I do. I mean, you're still here.”

“And?”

“And you could have dumped me by the side of the road and spun off into the sunset! Left us to deal with the plant soldiers, wish us luck as he leave. But you never even thought for a second about leaving. You just went right to trying to fix it. You really _care_. And I've forgotten how to care and . . . you've been though so much and you still care.”

“You're right,” the Doctor said, “you _are_ an idiot. Don't care? You knocked the whole interface off its feet when you realized your mother might be in danger! You're an idiot. But I'm an idiot too. That must be why I want to kiss you again.”

“Oh,” Bog said, sitting up straight, “Oh! Really?”

“If you'd rather not,” the Doctor began to stand up.

Bog pulled her back down, “Why do I always have to catch you?”

“I'm elusive. It's my thing. You would not believe the bounties on my head.”

“Does this mean I've succeeded where the space police have failed?”

“Don't let it go to your head, marsh man.”

Her eyes were beautiful even when she was being abrasive.

This time when Bog bent his head to kiss her, the Doctor tilted her face up to meet him. He slipped his hands tentatively up to her face, only just touching her skin. There was a universe inside her and he almost didn't dare come too close. The Doctor's hands gripped handfuls of her jacket hem and she didn't reach out to him.

“This isn't even real,” Bog pulled back, still holding her face in his hands, “This is all just in my head, isn't it?”

“I'm not a figment, if that's what you mean. Hold on a moment.”

She shifted until she was kneeling in front of Bog, barely taller than him even though he was still sitting down. He took his hands away quickly, like he had been caught doing something he shouldn't have. The Doctor did not remark, just reached out and laid her fingers on either side of his head, mimicking how they were positioned in reality.

The forest slipped away and Bog's pain fell back on him, but he was distracted by the small hands cupping his face and the soft kiss the Doctor pressed to his dry lips. The kiss lasted as they slid back into the forest, reality slipping away again.

They stayed still for several long breaths, looking into each other's eyes.

“How much time are we wasting?” Bog made himself ask, the brief trip back into reality reminding him of their deadline.

“Not too much. When you're not actively piloting those soldiers then outside time slows down again. It's barely been seconds since this . . . this _conversation_ started.”

“Oh. Good.”

He kissed her again.

The Doctor stood up mid-kiss.

“I have an idea.”

“Oh?”

“Ah, yes, sorry, that was very nice, and your eyes are very blue, but I'm having an idea,” the Doctor waved a hand, walking off into the middle of the clearing.

“I'm all ears.”

The Doctor bit her lips and looked strained.

“You thought of a pun, didn't you? You might as well tell--”

“Corn!” the Doctor burst out, “Okay, I'm done.”

“You sure?” Bog stood up and came over to her, noticing that the red button had disappeared when he wasn't looking.

“Yes. Here's the thing, This, all this, this forest--” she started to spin around, arms thrown out, but she caught her boot on a root and pitched forward.

Bog caught her arm and hauled her up. She kept moving as if she hadn't been just about to fall flat on her face.

“This forest, the interface, the AI Roland corrupted—they're the door. I've been thinking that we had to use the door, but why use a door? Doors are boring. Everyone uses doors. It's been done.”

“I suppose Time Lords have something way better than doors, but your point is . . .?”

“The door forces us to go a certain way, _think_ a certain way. But what if we went through one of the walls? All the protection is on the door, it's assumed that the walls will take care of themselves.”

“Look, if we can't open a door, how are we going to smash a wall?”

“All this,” the Doctor started to spin again but Bog grabbed her by the shoulders and keep her facing him, “This is the interface, meant to filter the information stored in the pendant, make sure the user doesn't get overwhelmed. The amount of information in here could make your head explode if it hit you all at once. You were overwhelmed with the data dump you got earlier, but that's just skimmings. The interfaces are wired against us, but what if we bypassed them altogether?”

“Doesn't that end up with my head exploding?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But there's a chance?”

“There's also a chance you won't. Which is better than anything you have if you push that button. Are you going to let met go?”

Bog still had his hands on her shoulders.

“No. You'll run off and pitch yourself into a tree.”

“That was _once_ \--”

“Nearly twice.”

“Are we going to try this or not?”

“Yes, but I have to do something first.”

* * *

 

“Hey, mom.”

The phone felt too smooth in Bog's hand and his root-like fingers were not designed to operate it. The Doctor had dialed the call for him and then gone off to tinker at the console in preparation for their next attempt while Bog talked to his mom.

Possibly for the last time, if things didn't go well.

“Yeah, I'm okay, mom. Got to a . . . a friend's place. Are you okay? Where are— _where_?!”

“At the hospital,” Griselda King replied, “as a volunteer, dear, not as a patient. The ER is crammed right now because—well, you know. World’s gone mad. It's all over the news and some oddball scientists are claiming this is the earth's response to our reckless pollution of the air and water. Anyway, I'm just taking a five minute breather, you called at a good time.”

“Good. I just wanted to check on you. Let you know I was okay.”

“You sure you're okay? It's been pretty rough out there today.”

“Uh, yeah,” Bog shifted, wincing at this sore ribs and trying not to tangle himself up in the cables, “Fine.”

“As in actually fine? Or as in you don't want to talk about it?”

“Um, actually,” Bog took a deep breath, keeping in mind that his next words were guaranteed to make his mother happy and that he would at least have given her that much if he didn't make it back, “Actually, I sort of met a girl.”

Bog anticipated his mother's reaction and had the phone well away from his ear when she screeched in her excitement over receiving such long awaited news. When Bog put the phone back to his ear he was met with a barrage of questions about this potential daughter-in-law.

“What's she like? Have I met her? What's her name? Is she a nice girl?”

“Ha! _Nice_ isn't exactly one of her primary character traits.”

The Doctor nodded in agreement, bent over her work.

“But you like her?” Griselda persisted, “She a keeper?”

“I . . . she's . . . hard to describe. She's a . . . a doctor. She's someone I would like to get to know better, maybe.”

“Sound serious.”

“Mom, no. We just met. _Everything_ sounds serious when the plants are mutinying against humanity.”

“Does she make you happy?”

“I don't think . . . I don't think I really get to be happy.”

“Pah!” Griselda scoffed, “You deserve happiness and you'll get it someday, maybe with this girl, maybe with someone else. When do I get to meet this lovely doctor of yours?”

“Meet her?”

“I don't do family dinners,” the Doctor warned him, “And I don't deal with people's mothers. I have a rule.”

“Well,” Bog said, feeling a smirk on his face, “We've got that family get-together coming up, don't we, mom? The Hanukkah party?”

“No!” the Doctor straightened up and shot him a deadly look, “I don't do parties!”

“Maybe I can bring her then, if she's still around.”

Griselda's exclamations of delight mixed with the Doctor's snarls of anger.

“That's wonderful, son! Oh, they're calling me! Back into the trenches. Stay safe!”

“Wait! Mom?”

“Yeah, still here.”

“I . . . I love you, mom.”

“Aw, she must be good for you if you've softened up enough to say that.”

“Plants are rising up against us, mom, that’s all.”

“Well, I love you too. See you soon?”

“Yeah. Soon. Bye.”

The Doctor snatched the phone out of Bog's hand and ended the call.

“You are not dragging me into a huge crowd of desperately cheerful holiday celebration and small, sticky children.”

“I kind of think you might. You owe me.”

“Look, just because our lips touched and I agreed to go see one of your shows does not make me your girlfriend.”

“No, but it kind of points that way, a little bit.”

“I am the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, not Broden Broderick King's girlfriend.”

“I know. Just yanking your chain. I'm not exactly the kind of guy girls stick with once they realize how messed up I am. That was just to make my mom happy. Her life's dream is to see me married off and settled and I could at least give her the sort of potential for that to be real. I’ll set the record straight if I get through this with my head intact.”

The Doctor stared at him. Bog was coming to think that she stared that way while her brain processed new information. She caught up with herself fairly quickly this time, however,  and pointed the wrench she was holding—which didn't seem to be either sonic or laser—at him.

“Listen, _I'm_ the messed up one in this . . . this . . .” She rubbed a hand through her hair, trying to summon the right word.

“Relationship?” Bog ventured.

“This relationship . . . ish. This relationship-ish thing. And it won't be anything at all if we don't get around the interface, so don't count all your chickens in one basket. And if you say anything to my sister about this I'll jettison you into a supernova.”

“Right. So, are you coming to the party, then?”

“This is getting back at me for all those plant puns, isn't it?”

“Mm. Might be. Look on the bright side: if my head explodes then you won't have to go to the party.”

“I can only hope.”


	22. Chapter 22

Bog leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed, riding through the waves of pain that came whenever he risked moving. He tried to distract himself with counting the cables attached to him, but that was depressing and he already thought about them every time he tried to make himself a little more comfortable. They dragged and pulled, at his arms, his legs, along his spine, his head, and even one right over his heart.

Did plant people have hearts?

Bog pressed a hand over his chest, the cable sticking out from between his fingers. A racing heartbeat met his touch and he felt relieved that at least one thing was still where it should be.

“Do you really have two hearts?” Bog asked.

“Yeah. Cross my hearts, it's true.”

Cracking his eyes open, Bog looked over to check the Doctor's progress. She was still up to her elbow's in the console, surrounded by wires and bits and pieces. On the wall in front of her there was footage of breaking news concerning the plant soldier's attacks. The volume was turned low, but Bog still heard someone say something about “this all natural menace”.

“Do I look as bad as that?” Bog asked, watching the plant soldiers being shoved back by riot shields before the news cut to video of a packed emergency room.

“Worse,” the Doctor said without looking up, “you're stuck full of cables and covered in dead skin.”

“Ha ha,” Bog rolled his eyes.

The plant soldiers were human-shaped with rudimentary faces. There were eyes, but the rest of the features of a face were more suggested than actually present. Uneven branches stuck off from the soldiers' limbs, leaves growing randomly over the bark of their skin. They were twisted, gnarled, only half made, and walked painfully slow except when a victim was in reach, then they darted forward with frightening speed.

“How's the antitoxin coming?” Bog asked, watching the newscaster talking in front of a crowded hospital.

“Dawn says they've got some good options brewing. The problem is distribution. They can't just run around sticking people with syringes or asking them to swallow pills. I mean, they _could_ , but it wouldn't result in much more than having to talk their way out of getting arrested.

A phone rang.

It rang for nearly a minute before the Doctor went, “Oh!” and fumbled in her pockets, “That's mine. Hello, the Doctor speaking. I'm in the middle of disabling an army of malevolent plants so state your business in as few words as possible before I get bored listening . . . _who_ gave you this number? Kate? Kate Stewart? What's she doing giving out my number to—who are you again? Strategic homeland intelligence what now--? What do you riff-raff want?”

Bog scooted himself up, trying to hear the other end of the conversation and also raising a hand to try and alert the Doctor to the fact that she had gotten her feet tangled in the cables and if she tried to pace she'd trip and fall.

“Antitoxins? Oh, you want to talk to my sister . . . yes, I have a sister! I'm allowed to have a sister. Lots of people have sisters . . . look, I'll text you her number and you can bother her. I'm taking down an army right now, bye.”

“Who was that?”

“Government people. Can't believe Kate Stewart gave them my number. How does she even have my number? Wanted to hear if I'd got anything to help with the current predicament. Dawn can handle it.”

“If you move you're going to kill yourself.”

The Doctor looked down at the cables wrapped around her feet. She delicately shook her ankles free and stepped out of the tangle. She jumped over Roland's prone form and approached the console from a new angle.

“Staying hydrated?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. My skin has cleared up and it cured my depression, I'm so hydrated.”

“You're still replacing lost blood, so shut up and sip.”

Bog picked up one of the bottles of water that the Doctor had lined up next to him, “How's it going with . . . whatever it is you're doing?”

“Bypassing the interface without destroying the pendant or computer. Give me five minutes and a cookie and we should be good to go.”

“All out of cookies.”

“It's fine, I have my own.”

The Doctor did indeed have a cookie. Bog thought it might be peanut butter.

“Alright, so,” the Doctor said around a mouthful of cookie, dropping herself down next to Bog, “You knocked us out of the interface before and I need you to do that again. It'll give us a push and the modifications I've done should keep us from returning to it.”

“What happens if my head starts overloading?”

“We hope that doesn't happen. Now, I need you to think unhappy thoughts.”

“Easy.”

“But you need a bit of a shock, too. I'm going to feed you something and hopefully it'll ping off your own bad memories and give us that oomph we need.”

“Is that a technical term? Oomph?”

The Doctor bumped his shoulder with hers.

Bog hissed in pain.

“Oh. Oops. Sorry,” she patted his shoulder gently, “I don’t really have anything on hand for pain that will work with Cheem biology. Aunt Aura will know how to fix you up. Ready?”

“No, but go for it.”

“That's the spirit.”

She reached for his face and he took the opportunity to kiss her. It might be the last moment in the real world that he would have and he wanted it to have something in it aside from pain.

“You do that a lot,” she remarked.

“Might be about to die. Carpe Diem,” Bog awkwardly rested his head against the wall, hampered by the cables, “Sorry.”

“It's fine. It's just that you're going to be sorry about it later.”

She didn't give Bog a chance to ask what she meant, plunging both of them into the unreality inside the primrose pendant.

* * *

 

“I'm already working on something.”

Aura had Dawn and Sunny maneuver the plant soldier's plastic-covered corpse down the stairs into her lab. She quickly cleared off a table and motioned for them to set it down there.

“Oof!” Sunny said, letting the thing drop, “I feel like an accessory to murder. Or that I'm helping illegally harvest organs.”

Sunny looked around at the clean, white lab. Unlike the mishmash of color and sparkles that cluttered the cottage, this room was strictly organized. The shelves against the walls were stark metal, their contents lined up with mathematical precision that was completely at odds with the organic sprawl he had come to expect from Aura Plum.

“Just a plant,” Dawn patted his hand.

“Hmf,” Aura sniffed, taking off her fluttering jacket with draping sleeves, revealing her bark covered arms, “ _This_ plant has been working on something, as I said. Once I saw the news I knew something had gone wrong. I'd been feeling it for awhile now, that, and you two showing up on my doorstep with _that_ only confirmed it.”

“I guess using the pendant all these years to regulate the ratio of your Cheem to human genetics means you've gotten attuned to it? I mean, it's connected to all the Cheem on earth, isn't it?” Dawn started to lean her elbow on the table, stopping when she realized she had been about to put it down the the plant corpse.

“You can stop trying to be clever, you won't impress me,” Aura said stiffly, wrapping up her hair in a shimmering blue scarf, “I take it Broden is trying to help you fix this mess?”

“He certainly is!” Dawn said a touch too brightly.

Aura gave her a sharp look.

Dawn beamed.

“Who has control of the pendant?” Aura went over to a sink and began to scrub her hands, “Centuries I spend making sure that pendant stays safe, in the family, telling them not to let it pass out of their hands and to strangers! It was a hard job, but I did it and did it well! Never even one single tiny slip up! Then you and your sister breeze into the galaxy and two seconds later somebody has used it to start a plant uprising!”

Sunny wasn't the target of Aura's outrage but he tried to make himself inconspicuous behind the plant corpse anyway.

“Bog has the pendant back now,” Dawn offered, “He and my sister are fixing it--”

“Your sister,” Aura huffed, “ _The Doctor_. I don't believe for a second she even has a medical license!”

“Uh, three, actually.”

“Miss Oncoming Storm. That's what the daleks called her. The Oncoming Storm. Well, she certainly swept a whirlwind through my living room today! I have no doubt that she's at the bottom of this mess. If Broden doesn't get home safe and sound at the end of this I'm going to be contacting a few people who would be interested to hear where your sister is— _and put that down_!”

Dawn dropped a jar back on the shelf and whipped her hands behind her back, “Just looking!”

“Make yourself useful and unwrap that thing! You, stop hiding! Sunny, right? Pass me that hacksaw, I'm going to need to remove some samples for testing. I've been making some antitoxin for everything I could think of, but now I can get more specific. Gloves on before you touch anything, _please_.”

Looking at the hacksaw held in his gloved hands Sunny felt even more like he was participating in something very illegal.

“If the police raid the house,” He told Dawn, “I was forced to work down here against my will. I'm going to throw you both to the wolves to save my own skin. It'll probably work, too, because I know I get to work on time today.”

Dawn giggled, unwrapping the plant soldier.

“Less chattering, more sawing!” Aura snapped, arranging test tubes on another table, “Even once I get this figured out there's still the matter of preparing it in large enough quantities and getting it to everyone who needs it--”

Dawn's phone chirped a cheerful tune.

Aura glared.

“I'll just run upstairs and take this,” Dawn's smile was slightly strained as she walked backwards to the stairs, “I'll be right back.”

Sunny felt nervous, left alone with Aura, but she just sighed and went back to her test tubes. Sunny went back to dismembering the corpse.

Dawn was galloping back down the stairs just a few minutes later, to Sunny's relief, shoving her phone back in her pocket while she said, “I just solved the distribution problem!”

“Don't touch anything,” Aura said automatically at the sight of Dawn, “How?”

“Your government got in touch with my sister and she referred them to me.”

“Which part of the government?” Sunny asked, “FBI? CIA? Whoever works in Area 51?”

“One of the hush-hush branches with a name that you can tell they were trying really hard to make it add up to a good acronym,” Dawn said with a vague wave of her hands.

“I'll skip asking how your sister knows these people. How does this help us?” Aura asked.

“We give them a sample of the finished antitoxin so they can run some tests and okay it for general use. After that we've got their backing on spreading it far and wide. How's our patient?”

Dawn gave a nod toward the plant soldier lying on the table. Someone had smashed its head in by the time Dawn and Sunny had picked it up and sap was still oozing out onto the clean, white table.

“Harmless, for all intents and purposes. It doesn't appear to spread its toxins once it's been . . . hm . . . stopped. Anyway, our distribution problem isn't solved at all. When has the government every done anything quickly? It'll take them weeks—months, even—to finish testing and get approval to use it!”

“Actually,” Dawn said brightly, “The reason they called my sister was because one of their labs in New Mexico contacted them saying that the antitoxin had been cleared for use. They were very confused, because the testing started six weeks ago, but all the paperwork was in order. There was a note for them to contact UNIT and ask about the Doctor and they did. And then they called me. So when you're done with that, Aura, I'll just pop back a few weeks and take it to the lab.”

“Nice!” Sunny would have offered his hand for a high-five but he was still wearing gloves covered with sap.

“Oh,” Aura paused with an eyedropper still hovering over the top of a test tube, “That's very useful—don't touch that!”

“I was just looking!” Dawn set the beaker back where she had found it, “You've got so many varieties of extracts and things. How do you keep all these plants without diseases jumping species? It's marvelous!”

Aura looked mollified by this frank praise and a little more of her characteristic breeziness came back into her demeanor, “Oh, I have my trade secrets! You know much about plants? You put on a pretty good show in my living room earlier today. Most people can't tell an orchid from a blossoming Creeping Shadow.”

“I've picked up this and that. Had a few things try to melt my face off and thought I'd better have some general knowledge of horticulture. Mostly self-taught. The academy wasn't very big on plants. I've got a comprehensive knowledge of the workings of time, thanks to them, but very little about plants.”

“The most I've ever done is a window box of herbs for my mom,” Sunny put in, “I can identify almost any savory plant on sight and tell you what dishes they go best with, but that's it.”

“Also a valuable skill,” Dawn put on her glasses to read the labels on a shelf of jars, “someone has to know what to put on the roast. I always get mixed up and end up putting nutmeg in soup when I meant to use paprika. I really need to take a tour of Europe again and hit up all the kitchens for a few pointers.”

“Wow. I hadn't thought about time travel like that . . . you could go back and have one of the first pizzas!”

“That's a brilliant idea! We've got to do that later on!”

“My dad is always talking about the history of Cajun and Creole food—he actually wrote a pamphlet about it for his catering business. He would kill for details. It makes such a huge difference with food, what areas you get your ingredients from, what resources you had to hand—ha, sorry! Save the world first, talk about cooking history later.”

“You seem very ordinary,” Aura remarked, taking the hacksaw from him and motioning for him to get rid of his gloves.

“As unflavored yogurt,” Sunny agreed.

“Sweetheart,” Aura returned to her work, “anyone standing next to that whirlwind and her sister end up looking pale by comparison. You're bound to feel insignificant, but the proportions are skewed. You work for decades to achieve something and they pop in and solve it in five minutes like all your effort was a waste of time.”

She shot a sour look at Dawn.

Dawn threw her hands up in a defensive gesture, “You’ve done amazing work, keeping that pendant safe, we aren’t trying to belittle that! But aren’t you glad to find out more about it? And you’re doing a fantastic job whipping up the antitoxin, I’m just trying to make sure it gets out there!”

“Whose fault is it that we need it in the first place? Yours! I should never have let that pendant out of my sight--not with you around. I should have come with Broden.”

“Look--”

“And then there's poor Broden! That boy has had a rough go of it, he didn't need you crashing in here and turning his world upside down too! Here, here's the antitoxin!” Aura shoved a lidded jar at Dawn, “Go on, fix this mess and get out of our lives!”

Dawn took the jar, her face uncharacteristically blank with shock.

“We were just . . .” she began.

“Leaving, I hope!” Aura snapped.

Dawn looked like she was about to push the point, but then she just closed her mouth and shook her head, “Sorry to have bothered you. I'll make sure Bog gets home alright when this is done. Let's go, Sunny.”

Back in the TARDIS Dawn pocketed the jar of antitoxin and began working her way around the console, flipping switches in preparation for their trip. The TARDIS was rumbling to life when Dawn said, “Yesterday--or last week, I suppose, for us--everything was so simple.”

“Tell me about it,” Sunny said, standing across the console from her and holding on to the edge of it in preparation for the trip, “If I hadn't met you I wouldn't feel like my head was going to explode from all this time travel stuff, or have been dragged into hacking up a kind of corpse.”

“I’m sorry!” Dawn half groaned, half giggled, “It wasn’t on my agenda either!″

“But, also,” Sunny went on, “I would be totally dead. That black cloud of evil would have eaten me and that would have been the end of it. So, thanks. Thanks for crashing into my life and turning it upside down.”

He grinned at Dawn.

She grinned back as she punched a final button.

Both of them hung on to the console, still grinning as the room tilted and they flew off into six weeks ago.


	23. Chapter 23

The weight of Bog's leather jacket was on his back, his feet underneath him, the pain gone out of him, and the smell of damp earth in the air. The memory of a kiss still fresh in his mind, tugging his thoughts back to another time, another kiss, and a single word:

“Goodbye.”

Bog had been tensed, waiting for the thought that would knock him off his feet, send him falling into the sky. Even so, he had not been prepared for the painful memories slicing through him like knives.

This time the forest did not turn on its head and drop him into the sky.

This time the forest broke in half, sending him falling.

Down, down, down into memories of painful endings that did not lead to new beginnings, only a empty void left behind by the absence of what had been.

* * *

 

It was dark.

The burning sky was finally dimming but the images of everyone left behind were seared onto her heart. She didn't even know who she was now. Golden light still shimmered over her new face when she pressed the button, a bright red jewel blossoming out of golden sections of an opening orb. Her hand on the gem, someone had spoken to her. Someone she knew. Someone she had not yet met. She couldn't remember what they said or what they showed her.

She remembered pressing the button.

With the faces of her parents, of Roland, of everyone she knew, all of them pictured clearly in her mind. She said goodbye and turned her back on all of them.

She pressed the button and she ran away into the empty spaces between the stars.

Running from the person she had been, from her own face and the face of her sister . . .

* * *

 

Two girls with hair that surrounded their faces like halos of sunlight stood in a large, bare corridor. The walls were stone and there were no windows, the light provided by round lamps set into the walls. There was only one door and it was behind them as they walked down the empty corridor hand-in-hand.

“We were supposed to be here hours ago,” one of the girls said, trailing her hand along the wall. There were markings on the wall, circular symbols, and apparently the girl knew what they meant because she let her fingers glide idly over some but others she paused over, stopping like she had recognized a familiar face.

“Nobody cares,” the other girl shrugged, “It's the end of the universe. Who cares if a couple of people are late to be filed away? It might as well be the end of the universe, the way everyone is carrying on about this war. I can't believe you agreed to be shut up here until it’s over.”

“It was the only way you'd agree to be filed away too!” the first girl laughed, abandoning her tour of the symbols and grabbing her companion in a hug, “Where I go, you go!”

“Always!” the second girl said, returning the hug before breaking away and walking a few quick steps ahead, “But it's the other way around: _you_ follow _me_. That's how it's been since day one.”

The first girl looked miffed, but in the way of friends enduring lighthearted teasing. She quickened her pace so that she walked in step with the second girl again, “Look, miss, just because you were born five minutes earlier--”

“I believe the records state that it was _ten_ minutes, if we want to be exact.”

“Oh, and we love our precision, don't we? Just like you've always been so quick to point out that you are _exactly_ three quarters of an inch taller than me and have _precisely_ two fewer freckles on your nose than I do on mine.”

The playful bickering trailed away when the girls stopped in front of a particular section of wall. There were two symbols, about the width of one of their small hands, side-by-side and nearly identical. The girls exchanged glances and sighed, turning their eyes forward and placing their hands on the symbols.

Two sections of wall slid away with a heavy rumbling, exposing two small, white chambers that wavered like a haze of heat was shimmering off them.

“I hope they don't keep us in here too long,” the second girl said, stepping forward to enter her chamber, “See you later! But preferably sooner!”

The first girl grabbed the second girl's hand and stopped her from entering the chamber, instead pulling her in for another hug. A tight, serious hug, that said as much, if not more, then any words she could speak now.

“Good night, little rising star, see you in the morning.”

“Good night,” the second girl said, kissing her sister on the cheek, “Don't look so sad! We won't know any time has passed at all! And we'll be right next to each other the whole time. Right?”

“Right,” the first girl agreed, freeing herself from the hug and stepping up to her own chamber, “Right next to each other. Just like we always are.”

The two of them exchanged smiles as they entered the chambers and the doors shut, the wall once more smooth and seamless.

For about fifteen seconds.

The first girl's door slid back open and she popped out again, pocketing a small jamming device that had kept the time loop from activating.

“Sorry, little rising star,” she said, touching the symbol that marked the time loop chamber that contained her sister, “I'll see you soon, I promise. But some of our people, classmates of ours actually, they're trapped on the edge of time and the high council ordered that they be left there. Sending a rescue would be too risky. I think I can get them out. Then I'll come back. You won't even know I was gone. I promise.”

 _I promise_.

The worlds bounced off the walls of the corridor, chasing on the heels of the girl as she left. The words did not fade, as echoes do, but grew louder and louder until the girl was running from the corridor to escape the lie of them.

She ran into a TARDIS that had been a museum piece longer than it had ever been actively flown. She flew it into the flames of a war and the person she had been was burned away.

She kept running, the echoes of a broken promise snapping at her heels, the reminder of her first face and her first lie. The first of many lies, the first of many faces.

The first of many wars.

The very first good bye.

* * *

 

 Bog remembered the sound of his father's last breath.

He had held on to his father's hand, selfishly clinging to every moment they had left together. Because his father was at the very foundation of Bog's world and when that last breath was exhaled the foundation crumbled, listing to one side and knocking the entirety of existence off balance.

Bog remembered a young boy whose face he never saw.

The building was supposed to have been cleared, no civilian left inside.

A quick movement out of the corner of his eye and he fired without seeing what he was firing at. One moment the floor was empty, the next there was blood. The foundation of his life crumbled further. He had been the hero. The dedicated soldier giving back to his country. He had joined up out of practicality but he had bought into the propaganda, that he was part of something bigger than himself, something important.

A hero.

When he was really just a murderer.

His bullet ended a universe of potential. That boy could have done so much, been so much, _anything_ , if it hadn't been for a jumped up soldier out to save the world in all the wrong ways.

The boy whose name Bog would never know.

That boy didn't get the chance to say goodbye to anyone.

Bog remembered Ellie.

Remembered the sweetness of their time together, of her kiss. But that sweetness had turned bitter when he could no longer hide that he wasn't the man he pretended to be. Bit by bit the facade was chipped away, the mask of a good man falling from his face and all that was left was a killer of children.

Bog remembered how he had screamed at her when his mask slipped and the pain in his heart demanded to be let out. He couldn't even remember what flimsy pretext he had for shouting, only Ellie's terrified face.

How he begged her forgiveness afterwards, tears on his face, swearing he would never treat her like that again. And Ellie, beautiful, loyal Ellie, she believed him far too long, forgave him far too many times. But finally, _finally_ , she realized it wasn't her job to save him. That no one could save him.

Brave Ellie, who said goodbye and walked away into a new beginning.

All these memories ran together and Bog relived them all at once.

Ellie's fear of him.

His father's last breath.

Blood pooling under a young boy's body.

The foundations of Bog's world had completely crumbled and he crawled into a bottle to keep from seeing the rubble of his empty world.

The Doctor was running.

Running from the ruins of her home.

If she wallowed, Bog couldn't see it.

She ran.

She remembered.

Bog stood still and let the darkness catch up with him, let it consume him.

She ran from the dark, though she knew in her heart it was a race she could never win.

She ran and now she was holding out her hand to him, inviting him into the stars and away from the pain he had buried himself in. The pain that was so familiar that he clung to it, because it defined him. It had shaped him, it had been the cornerstone of what he had built a new existence on.

It was what he _deserved_.

He couldn't take her hand.

He looked at the dead boy and wished he knew what his face looked like.

The Doctor stood next to Bog, looking at the small, dusty room that he had chosen to trap himself in.

“This is no way to honor anyone's memory.”

“It's all I have,” Bog felt the weight of his gear his back, the grit of dirt in his boots, could hear the movement of the other soldiers nearby, “It's all I deserve.”

“Maybe, but _he_ deserves better.”

The blood was gone.

The boy was standing with his back to Bog.

“You did see his face,” the Doctor said, “it was quick, but you saw it and it's still in your head. It's there if you want to look. Put that down.”

Bog looked at the gun in his hands.

He had been carrying it the whole time.

“Put it down. Say hello.”

Bog slipped down to his knees, slowly placing the gun on the floor, dragging his fingers away from the trigger, his eyes fixed on the dark hair of the boy standing in front of him. Standing close enough that when Bog reached out he could lay a hand on the boy's shoulder.

The boy turned at the touch of Bog's hand, revealing a face that Bog had never managed to catch a glimpse of before. A face that was alive, dark eyes still bright with possibility.

“Hello,” Bog said, laughing a little. The laugh made him realize that tears were pouring down his face and blurring his sight, “Hello. I'm . . . I'm sorry.”

“Now,” the Doctor said, “say goodbye.”

“I—I can't. It isn't _fair_. He could have been _anything_. But he died. I killed him and I lived and I'm just a washed up drunk. It isn't _fair_.”

“Life isn't fair, Bog, and sometimes you get things you don't deserve. Do you think that this boy deserves the legacy of being the object of your guilt and regret? He deserves better than that. Stand up, say goodbye, and do something worthy of that boy's memory.”

“That won't make anything right.”

“Some things can never be made right. That isn't the point. Say goodbye, Bog.”

The scene flickered and the Doctor, wearing her first face, lay on the floor of her TARDIS, surrounded by the people pulled from the edge of time. There was a charred mark on her chest and she was gasping for breath. Golden light shimmered over her face, replacing the light that was vanishing from her blue eyes.

“Goodbye, little rising star,” she whispered, looking up at a picture stuck in the console. A picture of two identical girls with puffs of yellow hair, “I'm sorry I lied . . .”

“You can't take it back,” the Doctor, the present one, said, the overlapping memory disappearing, “That boy is dead. The man you were is dead. You're somebody else now, made up of pieces from all the different men you were. There's good pieces, there's bad pieces, it's up to you how you put them all together.”

Bog looked at the boy, a boy not more than thirteen.

“He could have been _anything_.”

“ _You_ still can be. So be something worthy of that boy.”

Bog wiped his tears away with the back of his hand as he stood up, noticing that he wasn't wearing his combat gear anymore. Just his old leather jacket.

“I'm . . . I'm sorry, kid,” Bog quavered, looking into those beautiful _living_ eyes, “I'm sorry. I . . . Goodbye.”

The memory did not crack apart, it fluttered into pieces, like a flock of butterflies startled from their resting place. The dull colors of the room floated away, snatches of deep red and shining brown scattered here and there.

The last crumbling bits of memory vanished until there was only Bog and the Doctor standing alone in the dark.

She passed him a handkerchief, “Now we can get down to business.”


	24. Chapter 24

Once upon a time, in the time before light, there was a seed. A seed in the darkness, waiting for light so that its shell could split and a sprout unfold.”

The Doctor's word struck a chord in the memories Bog had glimpsed during their earlier trip into the primrose pendant, “That's Cheem mythology. Their creation myth.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed, “And now, in it's way, a fact of Cheem history.”

The forest interface had vanished so that there was indeed only darkness. The primrose seed, as it had been before the Time War shattered it, hung in the darkness, its pink color veiled by the golden shell of amber that encased it. The amber that had been created from Cheem blood to bind all the pieces of the seed together.

“That's it, then?” Bog stood over emptiness, giving his neck a crack. The gesture was mere nervousness, seeing as he would probably have to try really hard to experience physical discomfort in a world that was strictly imaginary, “Get my hands on that and we're set?”

“More or less. Probably more. Definitely more. But neither of us have to deal with your emotional baggage over this so that's a plus.”

“Yes,” Bog slouched his shoulders and turned his tear-streaked face away, “because I'm the only one dragging baggage around. You've had nine hundred years and some change to gather baggage. I've got carry-on. You've got a whole set with matching handbag and your initials engraved on everything.”

The Doctor nudged him with her shoulder. The gesture may have been meant as some awkward form of comforting, but it also served the purpose to pushing Bog toward the seed, “Just get cracking, swamp thing. We haven't got forever.”

“How time flies,” Roland commented, standing next to them, looking thoughtfully at the amber, “Just yesterday we were defacing the statues on the academy lawn for a laugh and then today, suddenly, we're floating in a void of infinite black, looking at an egg.”

Bog rolled his head back and groaned up at the all-encompassing void, “I thought he was dealt with. The artificial intelligence with the artificial hair.”

“Oh, don't mind me,” Roland said, a golden beacon in the black, “I've been bypassed and can only operate in a passive role of observation. I won't be able to stop you from doing anything, but I will be actively critiquing your progress.”

“ _Joy_ ,” Bog and the Doctor said in unison.

“Have you always looked like a diseased strawberry when you cry?” Roland asked, a look of disgusted curiosity on his face as he swept a disdainful glance over Bog's tear-streaked face, “Or has this symptom manifested since your recent growth spurt?”

“Do you have a mute button?” Bog growled, scrubbing his face with the handkerchief. He wished he had more control over how he presented himself in his own head.

“That feature was removed when I was installed.”

“Of course it was.”

“So alike, you and I, darlin',” the AI Roland put an arm around the Doctor, “Never quiet. Always getting in places we don't belong. We're a matched set, meant to be.”

“Getting hit on by a computer simulation of my ex-husband,” the Doctor shoved Roland's arm off, “Truly there is always something new to experience, no matter how old you get.”

“Have you been spying the whole time?” Bog asked the AI suspiciously.

“I've been in standby, non-observational, since you so rudely dismissed me earlier. I'm on now because you two have been monkeying around with core programming,” the AI Roland twitched his shirt cuffs back into place then paused, matching Bog's suspicious look, “Why? What have you two been up to?”

The Doctor looked at Bog out of the corner of her eye.

He looked back at her.

They both turned back to Roland and said, “Nothing.”

The AI pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, looking back and forth between them, trying to search out answers in their faces.

“Yeah, so,” Bog looked back at the primrose seed, “smash the amber, grab the seed, take control, grab a drink before the bars close?”

“In a nutshell, if you leave out ninety percent of the relevant details. Though, of course, there are certain planets where you could find shells big enough--”

“Yes, thanks. Keep the peacock from bothering me?”

“Sure, sure, why do _you_ get the easy job? Hey, Roland? Tell me . . . tell me what you do to get your hair to look so . . . bouncy?”

The strain in the Doctor's voice made Bog chuckle, but his amusement was quickly replaced by thoughtfulness as he approached the globe of amber. It was about the size of a beach ball and Bog considered trying to pick it up and smash it on the ground. Or would it fail to be held up the same way Bog was and go plunging down into the nothing below his feet?

Ignoring the snatches of nearby conversation about quantum hair gel and hyper-hairspray, Bog tapped the amber with his knuckles.

It felt solid.

Except, it wasn't, was it? It was just pieces of computer code, just images in his head. It couldn't actually be solid, it wasn't even exactly real.

“Open up,” Bog ordered, seeing if it recognized his admin status.

It didn't.

Still, he was the admin and something in the program had to still recognize that. The shell of amber kept the seed together, kept the data contained, kept it from flooding out and overwhelming the user. But this was not part of the seed's original programming and it was probably fighting against the amber, trying to breach it.

And Bog was the admin, the one it would try to reach out to.

Hand pressed flat on the amber, Bog squinted at the seed, laying there in apparent peace, “Can you hear me?”

The darkness shook and the conversation about Roland's hair was cut off, no doubt saving the AI from being ripped into individual strands of computer code by the Doctor.

“That's new,” the AI remarked with a lift of his precisely shaped eyebrows.

“That's interesting,” the Doctor said.

Cracks were running through the amber, radiating from the seed and toward where Bog's hand was resting on the amber. A split had appeared down the length of the seed, a white thread  in the heart of the amber.

“I mean,” Bog shrugged, a little breathless, “it's a seed, right?”

“And seeds grow,” the Doctor walked around Bog and the amber, twisted around to get a look underneath, then back up to the cracks under Bog's hand, “Good thought. More of that, please.”

“You put it into my head, quoting Cheem mythology.”

“We can pass out compliments later. Keep at it.”

The emptiness around them shook again.

“That really cannot be safe,” Roland said, “you're going to bring the whole program down.”

“Just your parts of it. Just the dry rot,” the Doctor said with a sharp grin, the shaking growing constant while Bog focused on making the sprouting seed spread out tiny rootlets to widen the cracks in the amber, “the rest will grow back.”

“Always trying to get rid of me.”

“Always trying to resurrect the dead past.”

“We're Time Lords, buttercup, we have an all-access pass to the past. Nothing ever really dies and nothing is so set in stone that it can't be shifted and changed. I'll win you back. I have all the time in the world to try. And you'll have all the time in the world to make it all up to me.”

“Whatever I did to you, Roland, you've more than gotten your own back. Ten times over.”

“Some things don't go away so easy. Like betrayal.”

Bog really wanted to tell the AI to shut up. The memory of a knife in the Doctor's back was still vivid in Bog's mind and to hear Roland taking up the role of the injured party made Bog furious. But Bog had his teeth ground together in concentration, hands on the cracking amber, eyes riveted to the painfully slow growth of the sprouting seed. He could not tear himself away just to snap at the electronic reflection of Roland.

The cracks were right under the surface, close to splitting open. Bog could hear something whispering. It was like being underwater and hearing the muffled voices of those standing in the open air above. The rootlets were pushing towards his hands and he pressed his hands harder on the amber, trying to speed up the process.

“Come on, we've got an army of evil plants to stop. Just a little bit more . . .”

“I disapprove of this and not just because it's counterproductive to my own plans,” the AI said, voice unnaturally cheerful and calm, “It's against my code to let you keep smashing through all these safeguards. They were all put in place for a reason, you know.”

“Yeah, my head might explode,” Bog hissed through his teeth, straining to hear the muffled voices.

“That's one way of putting it. The primrose pendant broadcasts a signal over the entire planet, continuously gathering information and adding it to its data banks. Now it's linked up to a TARDIS and with the safeguards down you'll have no control over it reaching into different times. You'll be simultaneously flooded with all the information the primrose contains while it continues to add more _and_ your consciousness will probably be ripped apart trying to exist in multiple times at once.”

“I really don't want details. I specifically now ask for no details.”

“There's still time to stop,” Roland said helpfully, “if you step away now the system will begin to repair the damage and you get to keep your life and your sanity.”

“Hey, wee madwoman? If this thing burns me out what happens to the plant army?”

“It's possible that they'll crash along with the rest of the system.”

“Not a sure thing?” The amber was going to crack open at any moment unless Bog stopped now.

“Nothing is a sure thing. I hate being sure. The moment you're sure of something you end up getting a piano and a stack of encyclopedias dropped on you just as you step into a manhole. But the chances are good that even if you fail the army will be crippled.”

Bog felt a scrap of memory land on him like a butterfly, a deep liquid red rolling over the bright shine of dark brown eyes.

“That's good enough.”

The amber burst, the seed's rootlets exploding outward and wrapping around Bog's hands. The seed was split open completely now and there was a pink and yellow primrose the size of Bog's head blooming in the darkness.

“Ugh,” Roland shook his head in disapproval, “I did try, at any rate. But what could I expect from a glorified office decoration? Certainly not any observable levels of critical thinking--”

Bog couldn't hear the AI anymore.

The roots had wrapped around his head, blocking out all light and sound.

Roots, vines, it was hard to tell from the inside, but they were growing around him, tangling him up like the cables attached to him in reality. The roots were digging into his skin and grabbing onto his bones. One slid past his ribs and settled around his heart. With each beat of his heart he could feel the loose coil of the root in his chest, getting tighter as he started to panic and struggle.

He tried to call out to the Doctor for help, but he could finally hear those distant voices clearly, like someone had suddenly turned up the volume on the radio. Roots dug in around his ears and he could hear again.

He could hear everything.

The babble of voices in dozens of different languages pounded on Bog's ears.

The voices of all the Cheem on earth.

All at once.

A maddening, incomprehensible din that made Bog want to scream. Maybe he was screaming, in his pain and confusion, maybe he just couldn't hear himself over the crowd.

More roots stabbed behind his eyes and he could see again.

It was even worse than experiencing the multiple points of view of the plant army. He was seeing through every set of Human-Cheem eyes on the planet, seeing everything and nothing. There was no way to filter the raw information, no way to view it except all at once while the voices roared in his ears.

The roots around his ears stabbed deeper and Bog was overwhelmed with population numbers, genetic codes, strands of human and Cheem DNA winding together into thousands of variations, the past combinations, the present ones, all the possible variations that might come into being, extrapolated from available data and probabilities.

Everything was there.

There was a baby being born in Scotland, she was Bog's fifth cousin on his father's side of the family, and she had the same genetic potential as Bog did, to be a genetic throwback to their Cheem ancestors. As of this moment she had a life expectancy of ninety years if she never learned of her alien ancestry. If she did, she had a possible life expectancy of three hundred years.

There was a man in Germany who had only the tiniest traces of Cheem genes, but those were enough to infest his body with cancerous tumors caused by a tiny quirk of genetic code. He was dying because he was almost entirely human, but not quite human enough.

Bog looked at the dying man and the baby being born and he could see the connections between them, follow their ancestral lines back hundreds of years to a common ancestor, back to the tangle of the Time War, where the seed had split and history along with it. Multiple paths still existed even though history should have narrowed it down to one and Bog could see all the might have beens and never weres.

Then he looked into the future and the possibilities staggered him.

Anything could happen.

With each second ticking by the possibilities lessened as people made choices and narrowed their paths, but still Bog couldn't see the end of it, the endless potential. It all kept pouring in, filling him up so that he was drowning with it.

“That's not for you!”

The voice twitched Bog's attention away from the future, pulling him away from the unending roaring and movement of the data pounding through his brain. He latched onto the voice, the lifeline, that somehow made itself heard over everything else. It was small, it should have been swept away by the sheer weight of the data.

“Your place is in your own time! Are you listening? Listen to me! You can't have everything, you can't even comprehend everything. You get a piece, you get your portion and you don't get to know what it will be.”

The Doctor.

It was the Doctor.

Of course she would be able to make herself heard.

“Once upon a time.”

The primrose seed was starting to drown out the voice.

“Once upon a time. That's a good start to a story. Doesn't say if the story happened already or is going to happen someday. Once upon a time. Any time.”

The schematics of a Cheem ship flitted through Bog's mind, dropping all the technical information straight into his brain like a load of bricks. For a moment he knew everything about growing ships, even though he understood none of it.

Then it was gone and he was left reeling.

“Once upon a time in a past that doesn't exist anymore,” the Doctor's voice came through again and Bog could almost see her through the crowd of images, “A madwoman in a box dropped out of the sky and into Broden Broderick King's life. They were friends. He already knew about his Cheem ancestors, the scraps of history left to him and his family. She helped him find more and then flew away again in her box. He lived a long, good life, a successor to his Aunt, a quiet hero to his people. He did great things and the madwoman checked in on him now again.”

It was hard to absorb her words with the press of everything else trying to shove them aside. He had a brush with the life expectancy of a group of Cheem that had been dead for thirty years, then was rocketed forward and immersed in data about the genetic structure of their great-grandchildren.

“He lived quietly, at least quietly compared to the madwoman. He would have argued his life was far from quiet. But he lived as humans do and he lived happily. Then he got old, as humans do. But he didn't have to. She didn't let him. He retired, passed on his duties to the next generation, exchanged a little humanity for a little longevity--”

The details of aunt Aura's prolonged life were clear to Bog and yet also complete gibberish. He could feel her somewhere, connected through the primrose seed, trying to reach out to him. She was just one voice in a storm of voices and he couldn't reach out to her or even catch more than a snatch of her worry.

“--followed her! Followed the madwoman into the stars, into a new beginning, of things that hadn't been written!”

Hands were ripping at the roots that bound him, tearing them away and blocking some small part of the endless stream of information pouring into him. Blocking off just enough that he could try to speak.

“I thought you didn't know what happened?”

If the Doctor hadn't answered Bog wouldn't have even known if he'd managed to say the words out loud.

“I may have known more than I was telling,” the Doctor hedged, “And it all became clearer when we got near the time it should have happened and didn't. You've still got a story, it'll just be different now. It starts with the plant army.”

Yes, the plant army was there, a small piece of activity in the chaos.

“That's the only thing that's written, Bog! The plant army. Not whether you stop it or not, just that it happened. What happens next, Bog? Tell me what happens next!”

It just wouldn't stop streaming into him.

All the data, all the power, and absolutely no control. It was going to burn him out, he couldn't process any of it, he couldn't find the plant army, let alone stop it. But the interface was gone and there was nothing to filter the information.

“You write it!” the Doctor was still ripping and tearing at the roots, uselessly, “You write what happens next!”


	25. Chapter 25

Look, it is _not_ a new face—it's the only face I've had so far! Barring unfortunate accidents I imagine I'll be sticking with this look indefinitely!”

Dawn looked with disgust at the armed and armored soldiers surrounding the TARDIS. Sunny would have gone right back into the TARDIS again if he wasn't afraid he'd be shot if he moved. He hadn't realized Dawn planned to put down right in the middle of a secure government lab and expect them to take her word that she was a friend.

“I'm not my sister or someone pretending to be her. Why anyone would even _try_ to impersonate her is beyond me.”

A few men and woman in business-wear murmured together behind the wall of soldiers. Sunny could just catch a few words, something about “the earliest in her personal time line we've ever seen,” and slightly louder demands for someone to “get UNIT on the line!”.

Dawn pulled her glasses off and pinched the bridge of her nose, “Still not my sister! Still not the Doctor! Well, yes, I have a doctorate or two kicking around, but I'm not _the_ Doctor. Just _a_.”

“The intelligence UNIT has shared with us about the Doctor has allowed us to form certain guidelines for collaboration should the need arise,” one of the business wear people spoke up, “But if you are not the Doctor then--”

“Nope. Not,” Dawn reached into the inside pocket of her suit jacket.

The guns snapped up.

“Get a grip,” she rolled her eyes and pulled out a Polaroid, “I'm not going to assassinate any of you with my snapshot of evil. Really, no wonder my sister complains about soldiers and their guns. You figure if you're holding them you've got to use them.”

“Hey, look, Dawn,” Sunny said, having just about dived back into the TARDIS when the guns went up, “Maybe you're from some enlightened planet where this sort of thing isn't a problem, but I am a black dude living in America and I get a little nervous around police-looking guys with guns.”

“Ugh, seriously? I thought we left that behind in the sixties. Hey, would you all just be at ease or stand down or something? I will _slowly_ hold up this picture of me and my sister on our eighty-sixth birthday. You will see we are _twins_. Now, I will _oh so slowly_ reach into my pocket for another picture—darn it!”

More snapshots, too many to have possibly fit in Dawn's pocket, fell out onto the floor.

Sunny raised his eyebrows.

“Pockets are bigger on the inside,” Dawn shrugged a shoulder, “Put them in myself. Had to. Do you know how impossible it is to find a woman's suit jacket that has actual pockets and not just those little flaps made to trick you into thinking there are pockets?”

The women behind the line of soldiers all nodded in agreement. One man asked if it was really a thing and a hushed discussion about pockets in women's clothing started in the background.

“My mom has the same problem,” Sunny said, “Dad fixes all the pockets for her.”

“Good man,” Dawn sat down on the floor, floor, crossed her legs, and began to sort through them. She patted the floor next to her and Sunny joined her, still keeping one eye on the guns.

“Mom had her purse snatched twice in two months. Well, they _tried_ to snatch her purse. She nailed both of them in the eyes with pepper spray. Anyway, she got fed up with purses.”

“Purse are the worst,” Dawn spread the snapshots out over the floor, “There's no place to put them in a spacesuit and it's so awkward when it gets snagged in the airlock and you're left dangling in the void of space.”

“There's a story there, I can tell.”

“It was my sister's idea to crash that space pirate ball—oh, these pictures are from Xylox 23. Marvelous vacation spot when the atmospheric filter is working and the mountains aren't melting from the sudden global warming. It was a whole thing. Anyway,” she held up the first picture, “Sisters. Our academy days, nostalgic times all around. Now, this,” she held up a recent picture of herself and the Doctor that Sunny knew, both of them wearing fezzes and standing in front of what looked to be a giant squid, “this is last week on Xylox 23. Hopefully you have her newest, most delightfully sullen face on file for confirmation. Now, can we get on with the antitoxin? You've only got five weeks, six days, twenty-one hours, and sixteen minutes. Do you want me to do seconds, too? Because I can keep running count and drive you all mad.”

“Sisters?” Someone asked dubiously after sharply shushing the discussion about the lack of proper pockets in women's clothing.

“Sorry,” Dawn patted down her coat, “haven't got our birth certificates on me. All I've got is a police box, a viral of antitoxin, and all five seasons of Wander Over Yonder.”

Dawn pointed her screwdriver at a monitor hanging on the wall and a twangy theme song started to play. The soldiers looked uncertainly from Dawn to the monitor, trying to figure out which of them to watch.

“I thought it got canceled after two seasons?” one of the suits asked, then immediately looked ashamed for knowing what Wander Over Yonder was. The other ladies and gentlemen in business wear carefully did not look at him.

“Got revived in 2019. Something for you all to look forward to. If you're nice I leave them on your hard drive.”

“What's this about an antitoxin?”

“Yes, I'm here to give you five weeks, six days, twenty-one hours, and thirteen minutes advance notice on a medium-sized alien incursion that will include some unhealthy levels of alien plant toxins. Got a friend to whip up a little something for that, then popped back here for you bunch to test and hand out. You've kind of already done that because of a closed time loop, so if you  could just . . . _stop pointing those guns at me and my friend_?”

For all that Dawn was a small, skinny woman sitting on the floor, she still managed to make the request sound commanding. The soldiers all looked to their leader for instructions to back down.

“Okay, okay!” A woman pushed through the gaggle of agents and soldiers, taking a cellphone from her ear, “I just talked with UNIT and Stewart confirms there's a sister. Stand down!”

“Hurrah for Stewart!” Dawn bounced to her feet in a twinkle of pink high tops, “Whoever they might be.”

“You said it,” Sunny took Dawn's offered hand and stood up, heartily relieved that the guns were headed out of the room, “Next time can we just call ahead?”

* * *

 

Bog was watching forests rise and fall, mesmerized by the pulsing of data about plant diseases jumping species and wiping out native crops before it was shouldered out of the way by the history of Cheem architecture. All of it was crammed into his brain, pushing against the inside of his skull, trying to crowd out the Doctor's voice.

Roots were pushing her hands away, growing over Bog's face again, but before she was pushed away completely her voice slipped through to him again:

“You write what happens next and I can help you. What happens next?”

What happened next? His head was going to explode, that was the gist of it. Bog was sure the Doctor would have fancier terms to describe the process, but, in the end, his head was too full and it was going to burst when it couldn't hold anymore of data streaming into it.

The roots had moved and twisted around him so much that he didn't not recognize the touch of the Doctor's hands on his face. Roots twined around his heart, tighter and tighter, squeezing when his heart jumped. When he realized that someone was touching him. Someone real.

He was laying against the wall of Roland's TARDIS.

He was kneeling in the void.

In both places the Doctor was there, pulling vines and cables out of the way until there was enough space cleared for her small hands to frame his face.

“C'mon, you grouchy pine tree, this is your story. Nobody gets to write their story entirely by themselves. Someone else always comes along and scrawls over your notes with a marker. But the important things, the really important things, you get to decide. Is dying really the decision you want to make? End your story with a sad little scribble? You've got better stuff than that in you, Broden Broderick King.”

Bog didn't think this was true.

But it was nice to hear.

And if he died he wouldn't get to make the Doctor eat her words about him being only a “decent” guitar player.

Pinpointing information about the plant army was like trying to find a specific raindrop during a hurricane. Even with the Doctor doing something—Bog was sure she was doing something because he felt like he was briefly surfacing in the middle of drowning—there was too much information. Details of the accelerated growing process, the selection and distribution of toxins, the modifications to the AI, a built-in GPS that aided the plant soldiers in traveling to the most heavily populated areas in the city.

“Good, good. Very good. Keep at it, Bog, you're on the right track.”

Bog continued to fumble around, doing the equivalent of pressing random buttons on a keyboard and hoping the computer would somehow unfreeze. If the keyboard was red hot and the monitor so bright your eyeballs sizzled just looking at it. The information was snatched away and shoved into some corner of his already overcrowded head. The brief semblance of control was gone and Bog was dragged back under the churning mass of information.

Too much.

Too much and no room for it.

No room.

No room _inside_ of him.

The interfaces had been bypassed. The interfaces that kept anyone accessing the primrose pendant from being burned up from the inside.

So what was needed was a new interface.

The roots tangled in his bones and woven around his heart were what connected him to the database and poured the contents into his brain. Something needed to redirect them, filter the information, slow it back down to a manageable trickle.

“Yes, yes!” the Doctor agreed with Bog's unspoken thoughts. He had thought they were, anyway, but there was only the smallest bit of his thoughts left that weren't being slammed with the relentless overload, it was hard to say for sure he hadn't said anything, “A conduit! Not a container! A new interface! That's good, that's very good. That's thinking positive. None of those sad artistic downer endings here! This is the kind of story I want to see!”

The old interfaces were still there. They had detoured around them, not destroyed them.

“Forests grow back stronger after a fire,” the Doctor said, “let it all burn.”

Bog's heart had been desperately pounding against its cage of roots. He did something . . . he let something in. The roots spread fine white hairs into the walls of his heart, the crevices of his bones, into the folds of his brain. Delicate strands of them merged with his blood vessels, flowing with the golden amber liquid of the pendant's data, siphoning it from his head. Now it just needed somewhere to go.

Out.

Outside was nothing by the empty black, a veil that hid the ravaged remains of the forest, the clinging traces of the corrupted AI wound into its roots. The trees were choked by the metal tendrils, dry and rotting, a framework of dead wood held up by a cage of metal.

“Burn out the dry rot and let the new growth take root,” the Doctor said, her comment bringing images of the burning forest to the surface of the chaos. The Time War had tried to burn down the forest in the primrose seed, but then it didn't happen. Time was in a snarl and the forest had burned, but history continued as if it hadn't. It was time to finally set it right, let the fire eat it all away so that the new growth could take root.

The roots burst out of Bog, exploding into the black like networks of lightning, taking to the black as if it were rich, dark soil. The data that had been stuffing itself into his head streamed out of him in a burst, like a can of soda that had been shaken and then opened. The roots carved new channels and the data rushed through them, crashing through the old interfaces, burning them up and tossing off the ashes. Bog was sure he heard Roland abruptly cut off in the middle of indignant exclamations. The kill switch exploded into tiny fragments of red, sparkling for a moment before melting into the fire.

Data streamed out of Bog's head now and into the roots. The primrose that had blossomed from the broken seed rested in his hands while its roots ran riot in the dark, chasing on the heels of the cleansing fire. Trees burst out of the ground and dripped sap that hardened into amber. Amber, trees, roots, all networked and filed the data away. He was lightheaded with relief, his head echoing with newly vacated space, but he didn't allow himself to relax. He lurched forward, calling back some of the data.

It streamed through his head, golden and warm instead of white hot and burning, the information he was seeking coming easily to view. He grabbed at the streams of data pertaining the plant army and gave something a yank, like pulling a plug, bringing the footage from the soldiers' eyes up for viewing at the same time.

All across the city the plant soldiers froze in the tracks, as still as the trees they resembled. The footage bounced as the soldiers fell, then stabilized again, showing Bog more sideways angles of pavement then even he and his routine drunken encounters with the ground had viewed before. The background noise of the city chattered in Bog's ears, screaming and shouting dying away when the soldiers remained mobile.

A gentle prompt to the new system and Bog found out how to neutralize the toxins so that when he ordered the army to die they did not release anymore poison into the air. The army had fallen, their wooden bodies drying out now that the pendant was no longer running the program that helped them pull moisture out of the air and ground.

The footage blinked out when the soldier's eyes became too dry to function.

Just like that it was all over.

The planet and—more importantly—his family were safe.

The data was humming gently through his veins, circulating through him and back out into the new network. Kneeling, he was curved over the primrose. It was growing out of his chest and held in his cupped hands.

Hands he couldn't move.

His skin was bark, even here in his mind, and his fingers had grown together, his arms fused to his sides, legs rooted into the ground, eyes cast down toward the primrose. Cautious fingertips brushed his face and he couldn't look up to see who it was.

“That should have been scored with drums and electric guitars,” the Doctor said, fingers on the rigid surface of his cheek, “You did it. Thank you.”

He couldn't reply. If he could have he would have insisted on finally having a drink, plant or not. He had earned that much. Though the sincerity of the thank you from the Doctor kindled a glow just as well as any shot of whiskey.

“You're probably a little stiff,” she continued in her usual brisk manner, “You'll get the hang of it. Being the new interface.”

No, he wasn't the new interface. The glow was dimming and his tired brain trying to wrestle the facts into order. He had _directed_ the information to create a new interface. Right?

“I think we'd better wake up now, Bog.”

The roots released Bog and he fell forward.

Right out of the pendant and back into the TARDIS, his body sliding down sideways from where he had been sitting against the wall. The breath was knocked out of him completely by the heavy weight of pain and he made no attempt to catch himself.

The Doctor caught him.

“You smell of flowers,” Bog mumbled into her shoulder.

“That's not me, champ.”

“Okay,” Bog sighed, not really hearing anything she said. Everything was so beautifully quiet and the Doctor was small and just . . . one person. Just one person instead of thousands. He would never had described her as quiet, but everything was relative. She was talking, but all he could hear was the strange double rhythm of her heartbeats. Four beats for every two of his.

“I'm not a hugger,” she said loudly, indicating she had spoken the statement several times, increasing the volume with each repetition.

“Okay,” Bog agreed, not moving.

“I understand you've been through a difficult time and that this might be reassuring for you, but . . . oh, whatever. There, there,” the Doctor patted the back of his shirt.

“My head didn't explode,” Bog managed to wrap his arms around her in spite of the cables handicapping his movements.

“Goodness, you get very Scottish when you're tired. Yup, your head is still there. Well done. And . . . and we're continuing the hugging. Right. You burned out the old interface and made a new one to replace it. You probably missed it, but the AI was making quite the fuss right before the roots snapped his neck.”

“Sorry to have missed that. We did it, then? Stopped the plants, saved the world? All done and good.”

“All done and good.”

“Now you unhook me from this and set me to rights?”

“Hm, well--”

“Boom, baby!”

Dawn and Sunny tumbled into the wreckage of the erstwhile art gallery, glowing brightly enough to live up to their names.

“Guess who delivered antitoxin to all the hospitals, clinics, and emergency rooms simultaneously?” Dawn, who was wearing sunglasses for some reason, demanded.

“It was us!” Sunny held up a hand.

“It was us!” Dawn high-fived Sunny, “And since outside they are making the galaxy's biggest compost heap out of dead plant soldiers I would venture to say that you guys have been busy too—why are you hugging Boggy?”

“He won't let go,” the Doctor said in tones to indicated she had suffered greatly but with saintly patience.

“Uh huh,” Dawn said with great skepticism, “Your usual tolerance is about fifteen seconds. I timed it once with a stopwatch.”

“He's had a rough day. And, again, he won't let go. Why do you have a tan?”

“Why are you patting his shoulder?”

“It is a subtle gesture to let him know that the hug is over and he should let go. It isn't working. I may have to poke him in the eye. You're tanned. You didn't make another side-trip, did you?”

“Don't you dare poke him in the eye! He looks all done in. The flowers are nice, though. What are they for?”

“Sunny,” the Doctor redirected her interrogation, “Where did you go?”

“Uh,” Sunny tried to hide a drink with a tiny umbrella in it behind his back.

“One or two tiny things might have come up,” Dawn admitted, “Lava monsters melting icecaps, that sort of thing. After we got the antitoxin sorted, of course.”

“Of course,” the Doctor agreed, a dangerous edge in her voice indicating that there was about to be a heated discussion.

Bog just leaned more heavily on the Doctor and closed his eyes.


	26. Chapter 26

“Try this.”

Bog's hands closed around the mug the Doctor had handed him. The sound of the smooth dish in his hands was vaguely unsettling. The dull sound of wood on ceramic. Every movement was unsettling, the scrape of bark on the smooth floor, the faint grinding of the hard edges of his skin where his joints bent.

The unease sank readily underneath the haze of exhaustion when Bog shoved the thoughts down and tuned back in to whatever the Doctor was going on about.

“I got the recipe from Aunt Aura. She yelled at me for ten minutes even thought I told her you were just hungover.”

“I guess you could call it that.”

“As a general rule I don't get yelled at by people's aunts.”

“I'll try to make sure it doesn't happen again.”

The Doctor rolled her head around to fix him with a look of dull disbelief, “Nothing can stop Aunt Aura. I tried and failed. Drink your miracle-gro and cease to make empty promises.”

Bog groaned and pushed the drink back at her, “No, please, things are already growing enough as it is.”

Soft green tendrils had wound around the cables plugged into Bog and crawled their way into the console. The central column was wrapped in tender new vines and a profusion of soft pink blossoms. Primroses dottled the interior of the pseudo-art gallery like pink constellations in a stark white sky.

“Just joking,” the Doctor took a seat on the floor next to Bog again, “It's just something to help the pain. All natural herbal remedy for the Cheem with a headache.”

Bog was glad the Doctor was next to him. He knew she'd probably stand up again if he tried to hug her, so he just took one hand away from the mug and put it over hers. A line of tension ran up her arm, fingers curling in at the touch of his hand on hers. He could feel the effort as she made very deliberately relaxed her hand and let him take it.

“You're looking quite the festive floral pine cone,” She remarked abruptly, her free hand clenching a fistful of her jacket.

“Don't remind me.”

There were flowers growing from the cracks in his bark-like skin. Wide, flat leaves layered his head with tiny pink blossoms peeking around their dark edges. He could feel the budding plants, itchy and disconcerting. Dawn had taken pictures and said it looked like a crown.

“King Broden Broderick,” the Doctor said, rolling his scrambled name off with a mimicked Scottish accent, “Lord of the primroses. Speaking of, you seem to be the sort of plant that likes shade, like primroses. Also, I suspect, nearly impossible to kill.”

“Fantastic,” Bog sipped the drink. It tasted like tea and spinach, “How long is going to take to fix me? When prince blondie stuck me in here he said he aged me, like, ten years? More?”

“That won't shorten your lifespan, before you ask. Extended it, actually.”

“That's good, I guess, but what about--”

Dawn sat down on Bog's other side, kicking her pink shoes into the air as she did, “Why are you two so buddy buddy all of a sudden? Today had been like two months long for me, but you two have been _strictly_ linear. What gives, sister mine?”

The Doctor grimaced, “Don't call me that. I was just checking his pulse. Great news: he still has one.”

She picked up Bog's hand and shoved it away.

“Have you two been bonding over mutual grouchiness? Has my sister made a friend? This is a huge advancement in your socialization!”

The Doctor looked at Dawn with smudged eyes and an expression of deep weariness, “I don't want to be socialized. I want people to stop being idiots.”

“Your standards are a little too exacting. You could count on one hand the number of people in the galaxy who even stand a chance of meeting them.”

“So, what are we going to do about _this_?” Bog gestured at the cables and his generally leafy visage, hoping to divert the conversation before Dawn figured out that Bog and the Doctor were . . . well, whatever they were.

“What are we going to do about _this_?” Sunny said, standing over the still unconscious Roland, “Are there, like, space police we can take him to? Is there a reward on his head and can we collect it in US dollars?”

“Sunny!” Dawn laughed.

“What, I have student loans to pay off!”

“I forgot he was still there,” the Doctor stood up, giving Bog's head an absent-minded pat before she walked away, “After the AI got its virtual neck snapped I sort of discarded the idea of him.”

“Wish I could have seen that,” Bog sighed.

“But what _are_ we going to do with him?” Dawn joined her sister in standing over Roland, both of them staring down at him with the air of people trying to decide if something went in the garbage or recycle bin, “I don't know why he decided to go all supervillain, but he _is_ my brother-in-law.”

“ _Was,_ ” the Doctor said with great emphasis, “The only thing he is to me now is a problem I need to solve. I'll have to think on it.”

“I suppose we can just take him back home and let them deal with him,” Dawn suggested, “Unless you don't want to risk getting charged with flying a TARDIS without a license.”

“Mm,” the Doctor said vaguely.

“More importantly,” Bog cut in, “am I going to be able to get that blasted necklace back to my mom?”

“Um,” Dawn looked into the opened console, “It's sort of . . . a bit _fused_.”

“With _what_?”

“Everything, basically,” Dawn waved her screwdriver over the console, “Looks like it's part of the computer. And engines. The whole TARDIS.”

“Great,” Bog took another swallow Aunt Aura's concoction, hoping it would somehow ease the painful thought of talking to his mother, “Not only do I have to tell her I'm temporarily a _tree_ , but also that I got a family heirloom fused to an alien time machine. Oh, Aunt Aura is going to be _livid_.”

“Good news is,” Dawn said, continuing her examination of the systems, “I think you've got control of this TARDIS now, through the primrose. You're in charge. Just about all the systems have been wiped and control relegated to your pendant, though there are some little pieces of programming . . . something a tiny bit alive. Those are always stubborn. Give me a second--”

“Leave it,” the Doctor walked around the console toward her sister.

“Just a second—got it!”

A final buzz of the screwdriver was followed by Roland materializing next to the console.

Dawn threw her screwdriver at his head.

It went right through.

The Doctor caught it.

“Oh, hologram,” Dawn ran a hand through her fluffy hair and gave a little laugh before taking her screwdriver back.

“Of course you have holograms,” Sunny shook his head, “Because this month—uh, _day—_ hasn't been sci-fi enough. Can I get a hologram? I could use it to make my boss think I'm working when I'm really out back checking my phone.”

“Most mobile holograms would be too see-through for that. Now,” Dawn put on her glasses and looked at the hologram's fixed smile, “what have you got to say for yourself?”

“If this has been activated you probably saved the day,” the hologram drawled, coming to life and standing at ease with its hands on its hips.

“How can one guy get around so much when he's not even awake?” Bog groaned, “turn it _off_ , I am _begging_ you.”

“Trying,” the Doctor was attacking the console with her own sonic screwdriver, giving pieces of machinery several whacks with her fist for good measure.

“Right now you're popping the champagne, throwing confetti, having yourselves a good old party of self-congratulation,” the hologram flicked its fingers in the air, “While _I_ am probably off and away already or I'd be saying this myself. I can only assume I made my exit with my usual flair.”

He twirled a finger through the curl that hung over his forehead and cast a sideways look and a smile. The effect was not what it could have been, seeing as the hologram apparently couldn't tell where people were standing and was facing a wall.

Everyone looked at Roland on the floor and rolled their eyes at the mention of an escape. The Doctor even paused in her work to grumble something under her breath about unnecessary dramatics.

“Now, this is very important, little sister. She hasn't told you yet. My buttercup hasn't told you everything and it's only right that you should know. As your big brother I feel it's my responsibility to make sure you have all the facts at your disposal.

Hologram Roland put a hand to his heart and looked sincerely at the wall.

“Turn off, turn off,” the Doctor muttered, still working, “Bog! Turn it off! You should have control of this thing!”

“Yeah, I just know how to do that, sure. Why do you keep assuming I have any idea what's going on? Can't you just hit mute?”

“Dearest little sister,” the hologram gave a winning smile and Bog was almost positive that Roland's teeth actually sparkled, “has she told you yet? Has she told you of Gallifrey's last days?”

“Shut up, shut up, _shut up_!” the Doctor kicked the console so hard she sent herself stumbling backward, screwdriver falling out of her hand and disappearing into the growth of plants around the console's base. She dropped to her knees and began scrabbling among the leaves.

“Has she told you how it burned? How the red-gold skies turned dark with smoke, the great silver spirals of the cathedral enclosed in their glass dome lost their light, like a star extinguished by the dark? The war raged throughout time, throughout space, our people fighting, brave until the last. Until the last flicker of the candle was lost and there was only the emptiness of space where a planet had lived, breathed, pulsed like a heart, a glorious centerpiece in the constellation of Kasterborous. Has she told you that it's gone? It's charred husk locked outside of time so there isn't even a grave to visit. Did she tell you?”

“No,” Dawn's eyes were fixed on the hologram but she shook her head, “I would know if it was gone. Gallifrey can't be gone! I would know! My head would echo with the emptiness if everything was gone. Roland knows that! Why would he say something so sick? Why would he say that? Sister! Look at me! I don't even know what name to call you but look at me!”

“Stop, stop, stop,” the Doctor ripped at the plants in a desperate, uncoordinated way, “She doesn't need to hear it from you. Not from you. Shut up, shut up--”

“Has she told you?” Roland's smile was gone and his eyes hard, his jaw set, “Has she told you, little sister, who robed our burning world in darkness and destroyed everything? All of it gone, daleks and Time Lords alike, assigned to oblivion?”

“ _Shut up_!” the Doctor was on her feet and ripping at the console's innards with her bare hands but unable to pry anything loose.

The Doctor's scream made Bog's heart leap up into his throat, the cry was frightening in its desperation and choked by the beginning of tears. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated so wide that her golden eyes were almost black, and her face marked with pain.

“Has your sister told you what she's done?”

The Doctor's face was dead white and she flinched at the hologram's words, hands going still. She leaned heavily on the console, breathing hard, eyes fixed on Dawn with the look of someone beneath a cresting ocean wave about to crash down on top of them.

Bog had know that the sisters' planet was gone, but until he saw the horror in Dawn's eyes he had not fully realized what that meant. What it meant, that the Doctor had ended the war and her entire race. Every member of Dawn's family, every friend, every person she had ever seen on her planet, were gone in the blink of an eye and their blood was on her sister's hands.

Something flipped in Bog's mind. He just wanted the hologram to stop and something responded to that desire. Roland's hologram gave a fizz and disappeared.

But too late to stop the truth from crashing down.

“You did something in my head,” Dawn said slowly, “You took your name right out of my head. And you did something else. Something else isn't sitting right in my head and I want you to tell me that it isn't what I think it is. That this is Roland's sick idea of a joke and his implications are pure invention.”

“What's going on? What happened to your planet?” Sunny touched Dawn's shoulder.

She grabbed his hand and held it tight, “Time Lords know Time Lords. We can hear each other in our heads. I know Gallifrey lives, it’s humming in the back of my mind. Or, at least, I thought it was. Something is there, in my head, but it's not right. It doesn't want me to look at it. Something in my own brain is hiding itself. Somebody _did this_ to me.”

“When she erased the memory of her name?”

“Yes. I thought that was all she did. I hope that was all she did. Tell me I'm wrong. Look at me and tell me!”

The Doctor's head was bowed, her eyes cast down, “I was going to tell you. In time.”

“No,” Dawn's hand tightened on Sunny's.

“But not like this. Never like this.”

“No. No! Tell me the truth! Tell me he was lying!”

“What I did . . . I regret it but it had to be done. I regret that it had to be done and that I had to be the one who did it. I'm sorry, little rising star, I'm so very sorry.”

“No!” Dawn pushed the word out, clenching her fists to keep back her anger, “No. It isn't true. You and I are going to unhook Boggy, make sure everything is right here and then we are going home. We are going home to Gallifrey with Roland and we'll get him help. We'll go to the house in the mountains. Just—just help me get Boggy out of this mess!”

Dawn dropped Sunny's hand and rushed over to the cables trailing from Bog, running her screwdriver up and down them and talking a mile a minute.

“He's fused to the primrose, but we can get him out. You had a plan. Just tell me what we need to do and with both of us working we can get this done in two heartbeats. Well, four heartbeats. And it'll take some time, Bog, to get you back to your usual handsome self, but we've got a time machine and you're welcome to come along. Not that you look so bad right now. You'll be looking sharp once we get these cables off--”

“Dawn,” the Doctor said softly.

“What Roland did we can undo. Just be patient and don't try and blow out any candles since you're exhaling oxygen. You could lose your eyebrows. If you had any.”

“Dawn, please.”

“Just tell me what to do!” Dawn threw down the cable, “I can't see how to fix it! You're the one who suddenly got old and clever, you tell me how to fix it!”

“We can't. He's the new interface. He's completely merged with the primrose pendant and the TARDIS systems. Removing him would destroy everything. Including him.”

“You—you--!” Dawn gasped, “I couldn't see how to get him out but you made me think—I thought you had a plan!”

“Yes. You were supposed to.”

“What do you mean, merged?” Bog pushed himself up to sit straighter, “You're getting me out of this!”

“There is no way out of it,” Dawn said, hands digging into her hair, pacing up and down the room in a swirl of coattails, “Before you merged with the systems. I couldn't see how we could get you free even then, but I thought she had a plan. I trusted her. I trusted her to have a plan!”

“You . . .” Bog struggled to breathe, trying to remember when the Doctor has promised to free him, to unhook him. She never had. After Roland had hook him up to the cables she had never stated Bog could be freed. She had lured him with the slim chance of overriding the interface and surviving to be free again. When that had never even been a possibility.

She had kissed him, or let herself be kissed.

In a day of fantastic, impossible things Bog had actually let him think that he might have a future. Not a future he had ever wanted or expected, but a future worth living. She had let him kiss her. Let him think that the impossible was possible. All while carefully making no actual promises, just the shape of a promise, outlined in the air by words that implied but never stated.

It had all been a trick.

“You _played_ me.”

She raised her eyes to meet his, her face blank but her eyes full of emotions that Bog couldn't read. When she spoke her voice betrayed no quaver of tears, only a terrible tiredness and dull acceptance of inevitable pain:

“I told you I would.”


	27. Chapter 27

“You promised—you _swore_ I'd walk out of here!”

Anger was clouding Bog's vision and he knew that in usual circumstances the room would be trashed before he could see straight again. But these weren't usual circumstances. He was tethered by the cables. They trailed from him, into the console, into the walls, reducing his world to a few square feet of floor.

A few square feet of floor that would be his entire world for the rest of his life.

The thought slammed into him so hard that the room tilted sharply.

Literally.

The floor rippled, changing from a flat surface to a steep incline. The Doctor, Sunny, and Dawn, grabbed the console to keep from being thrown across the room and into the wall. The floor did not remain in an incline for long, its white surface churned, a choppy white ocean ripping up the delicate blanket of plants that had laid on top of it.

“You _promised_ me!”

Bog was on his feet, the wall obligingly providing him with ledges to grab onto and hold himself up. He wanted to lunge at the Doctor, grab her, shake her until a solution was knocked loose. One of her insane, tricky answers that no one else would have have come up with. His inability to even walk over to her was fuel to his burning rage and the room writhed.

“Yes, well,” the Doctor was trying to ride the rise and fall of the floor, hanging onto the console, hair flopped over her face, “Not exactly. That was before Roland plugged you into the computer! I never promised I could get you unplugged! I’m sorry!”

“You made me think you had!”

“Fine. I lied. I'm sorry! I'm sorry--!”

“I don't want your apologies! I want you to unplug me!”

“It's impossible! Unplug you, you die. End of story!”

“End of story?” Bog placed a hand over his chest, wrapping his fingers around the cable plugged in over his heart, “Is everything just a story to you? Happy endings, sad endings, it doesn't make any difference because to you we're not _real_?”

Beneath his fist he could feel his own heart pounding. His chest was tight with panic, he shook with it. It numbed his hands so that they tingled and he had to grip the cable tighter to make sure he was actually holding it. The tingling fingertips of his other hand clawed at the leaves and flowers on his head, ripping off the invasive growth as if this process could somehow restore his humanity and freedom.

The Doctor was talking. Dawn and Sunny were talking too, but Bog could only hear the Doctor. Her words, her empty apologies, allowed through to keep his anger fresh, like salt on wound. Sticky shreds of plant stuck to Bog's shaking hand as he lowered it and grasped the cable over his heart with both hands.

The Doctor seemed to realize what he was going to do even before he did.

“Bog, don't!” she pitched forward, away from the console and onto the shifting floor.

“I write what happens next, right? Well, I'm going to walk out of here.”

That, or put an end to the whole miserable thing.

He yanked on the cable and it pulled on the hard edges of his skin. Whatever connected it to him twisted under his skin, dragging at muscles and bone. With a sharp twist he pulled the cable free, a scream of pain catching in his throat and coming out strangled from behind his clenched teeth. 

For a moment he wondered if he had pulled his heart out, before his eyes fell on the bloody end of the cable. Electronic roots sprouted from the end of it, dripping with thick, dark amber blood and the cavities they had left behind were filled with burning pain.

The room flickered, the floor dropping flat and the walls returning to their proper places, more or less. Everything was white, a horrible shimmering white. The Doctor's face was there in the middle of it, deathly pale to match her surroundings. Aside from the flickering the room was still, everyone frozen in place, no one speaking a word.

A heavy drop of yellow blood hit the floor like a thunderclap, breaking the silence, three voices erupting in a roar of unintelligible noise.

Bog felt himself falling.

He didn't remember landing.

He just kept falling, pain wrapped around his chest in white-hot bands. The further he fell from the twitching, shivering white walls of the art gallery the more the pain eased, cooling in the empty dark.

“Boggy? Boggy? Come on, you gorgeous tree, open your eyes!”

The bands around his chest squeezed tight and the pain doubled. He gasped in air, only just then realizing he had not been breathing. He wished he hadn't started again, because apparently he was laying on the floor with someone's truck parked on his chest, the vehicle pressing down harder when he tried to fill his lungs. Bog peeled his heavy eyelids open to see if he could catch a glimpse of the license plate so he knew whose tires to slash later on.

“You're awake! He's awake!” a hazy yellow ball bobbed up and down with excitement, “Now I'm going to kill him for doing that! Do you hear me, Bog? I'm dropping you into the nearest black hole as soon as you can stand!”

Bog was distracted by how it felt like his chest had been cracked open. He lifted a hand, which was heavy and uncooperative, and carefully explored his chest for cracks and illegally parked trucks. He found neither.

Just the cable over his heart.

“We got it back in, just in time,” Dawn was doing something with bandages, “You went into cardiac arrest, you idiotic stump!”

Bog had almost died and the cable was still there.

The tears leaking out of his eyes were from the pain, that was all.

“Get out.”

“No permanent damage. In fact, you should be feeling better in a few minutes. I think the primrose is stabilizing you--”

“Get _out_.”

The floor moved in a feeble rise and fall of tiles. It was barely enough to move Dawn back a few inches. With her golden head out of the way Bog could see that the gallery had gone dark, the floor frozen in hills and valleys.

“Not a chance, Boggy--”

“My name is _Bog_!”

The floor pushed Dawn away completely.

There was a period of brief chaos and Bog could hear the three of them stumbling around the room.

“ _Get out_!”

The door slammed open, a shaft of afternoon light cutting through the dim room. Protesting shadows flickered as they were shoved through the door, then fell silent, the door slamming closed again, the gallery turning dark.

Bog was alone.

Bog rolled onto his side, shaking with the effort of moving. Curling himself around the restored plug in his chest he tried to swallow the sob that rose in his throat, because crying hurt, the sharp intake of breath jarring his body so badly he felt like he was going to fall to pieces. So he tried not to cry.

He tried.

He failed.

* * *

 

“Is he gonna be okay by himself?” Sunny asked, trying the art gallery's door. It was locked. The sisters were lugging Roland out into the sunlight.

“He wants to be alone,” the Doctor said, “I think that's what he needs right now.

“I don't think he's going to try to unplug himself again, so he should be okay. He _shouldn't_ be alone,” Dawn added, shooting her sister a pointed look, “but there's nothing we can do until he decides to open the door. The doors locked and the shields are up, no way we're getting in there without his permission. Oof, what should we do with _this_?”

“Regard it with disdain,” the Doctor muttered.

Dawn and her sister pulled the battered and still sleeping Roland away from the door and propped him up against the wall. Dawn dusted off her hands and squinted in the sunlight, taking stock of their surroundings, “We're still in the same day, but as for where we are . . .”

“Paris,” the Doctor said flatly, leaning against the side of the gallery, arms crossed and head bent, looking displeased at all the sunlight.

“ _France_?” Sunny squeaked.

Dawn turned around, shading her eyes, “Oh, the Eiffel Tower!”

“Oh, yeah,” Sunny turned around to look too, “because of course it's in sight. Otherwise how would you know it's Paris.”

“Well, it's also sort of built over a rift in time so things tend to migrate toward it. Also there’s a distortion so sometimes you can see it in different places in spite of the distances or buildings that should be in the way.”

“Are you serious?”

“Never. But it's true.”

“You realize that we're going to have to take a selfie in front of it?”

“I thought that went without saying. But first . . .” Dawn looked back at her sister's dark form slumped against the shining white walls and glass windows of the gallery, “My sister and I need to talk.”

The Doctor was suddenly very interested in the pattern of the pavement.

“Sure,” Sunny nodded, “I'll just go see if there's a souvenir shop or something.”

“You still got that credit card?”

“I'm all good. I mean, telepathic translator—I can speak French! Text me when you're done,” he hugged Dawn tight, “Then we can talk?”

“Yes, please,” Dawn kissed his cheek, “And buy me a tiny tower. I've always meant to buy a tiny tower but I never have.”

The Doctor watched Sunny walk off, “What credit card?”

“Nope,” Dawn shook her head, “You're not allowed to act like the protective big sister right now.”

The Doctor refolded her arms uncomfortably.

Dawn considered the area, noting that it was a fairly empty park. The art gallery sitting in the middle of the stretch of green grass and brick pathways looked odd, but the few people walking by took no notice of it.

There were several chess tables nearby and Dawn gave a nod at the sight of them, “That'll do. Come along.”

Grabbing her sister by the jacket collar, Dawn pulled her along over to the chess table and sat her down in one of the chairs. Dawn took the other and began digging in her pockets, pulling out an assortment of items, wrapped candies, several vials of colored glitters, and a handful of chess pieces.

“I'm--” the Doctor began, venturing to look up.

“Shut up, I'm mad at you,” Dawn arranged red and white pieces on the board, “Mad isn't a good enough word. Furious is better, but still not enough. Boiling with rage. That about hits the mark.”

“I--”

“Also devastated,” Dawn tapped down the red king piece on its square, “I've been spinning about thinking that the war was over and we were on a grand holiday to celebrate. I'm having cocktails on the moon in the fifty-third century while my entire planet is dead and my people are fading away into legend.”

“I was going to tell you.”

“Oh? _When_? When you couldn't hide it anymore? That's not telling me. That's just not being able to lie to me anymore. You've only told me anything about what's happened because you were forced to. You didn't even tell me our parents were gone until I pushed the issue. Did you just want me to forget them? Is that what you were hoping? I'd be distracted by bright shiny new planets and interesting bits of history so much that I'd just forget about everything that's important?”

The Doctor laced her fingers together and stared down at the chessboard.

“That wasn't rhetorical,” Dawn said, “Did you think I was shallow enough to forget everything?”

“Of course not.”

“ _Really_ ,” Dawn wasn't sure if the tears in her eyes were from anger or sadness. Most likely both. Several drops rolled down her cheeks while she continued to arrange the pieces, “Because maybe you've forgotten after eight regenerations, but you and I used to be so much alike.”

“I remember,” the Doctor said, her voice almost too low to be heard.

“You should know,” Dawn sniffed and ran the cuff of her jacket across her eyes, “You should know that I'm cheerful and love to have fun, but that it doesn't mean I'm some empty-headed little girl without two serious thoughts to rub together. That's what everyone used to think about us. The silly, giggling little girls. Then we nearly destroyed the academy by ripping open a hole in time for extra credit. Then we closed it again. That was the impressive part. And everyone was so surprised that those two fluffy headed girls were actual capable of any sort of critical thinking.”

“I remember that.”

“I doubt you do, that you really do,” Dawn finished arranging the rows of pieces, viciously tapping the pieces onto the board, “Or you would never have treated me like those people treated us. Now, if you can manage to overlook my sweet little face and acknowledge I possess a brain every bit as good as yours, you will please tell me what exactly happened to Gallifrey.”

Dawn moved a white pawn forward on the board.

The Doctor automatically pushed forward a red pawn.

Conversation lapsed as pieces moved rapidly across the board until after two minutes Dawn's knight checked the Doctor's king.

The Doctor tipped her king over.

“I was going to tell you.”

Dawn snorted and blinked harder, bending herself to the task of rearranging the pieces.

“I swear I was. I just wanted . . . a little time. A little time spent with you, like we used to, just us two getting into trouble. A little time before I told you because once you knew . . . everything would change.”

“You showed up with a new face and a stolen TARDIS. Nothing has been the same.”

“Yes, but . . . there was something left of what we had. Some piece of me that was still . . . good.”

“Well,” Dawn wiped away the tears that persisted in dripping down her face, “Sorry I ruined your game of pretend.”

The pieces marched across the board as they talked. If the sisters' hands were shaking neither of them commented on it. Three more games were played—two ending Dawn's favor, two in the Doctor's—before the Doctor spoke again.

“It wasn't going to end,” the Doctor's hands hovered over the board, trying to decide on which piece to move, “The war was ripping apart so many planets, so much of history. We had lost sight of any honorable goal we had begun with. It was only victory left. Victory at any cost. The universe saw us as monsters, as horrible and cruel as the daleks. And we were.”

“You decided to do something about it.”

“I stole The Moment.”

Dawn dropped the knight she had just captured.

It had been a story. Just a scary story that children whispered to each other in the dark. The only weapon in the Omega Arsenal of Gallifrey that would never be used, even in the most desperate times. A weapon powerful enough to destroy whole star systems in a single moment. So powerful, so dangerous, that the weapon developed a conscience so it could judge anyone who tried to use it. Trying to use The Moment could destroy you, make you face everything dark inside your heart. It let you make the choice, but first it made sure you knew the consequences.

“It—it let you use it?”

“Yes,” the Doctor picked up the fallen knight and put it on the side of the board.

“Why?”

The Doctor closed her eyes, summoning up the scraps of memory she still had of that time. The golden light seething under her skin, her hand on the beautiful red gem, the dying echoes of a voice she did not know yet.

She opened her eyes and the images faded away like dreams upon waking, “I don't know. I can't remember. All I remember is that it warned me I would pay a high price for using The Moment. I told it that I had no intention of living past the end of the war.”

Dawn's hand trembled as she pushed her queen forward, tears pouring down her face.

The Doctor wiped away a drop of moisture trying to escape her own eye, trying to pretend it was just dust that made her eyes prickle, “It told me that I would pay a worse price than that.”

Dawn checked the Doctor's queen and whispered,  “What was it?”

“It told me I would live.”

Dawn couldn't stop the sob that escaped her, even though she pressed her hand to her mouth in a futile effort to hold back the sadness that was overwhelming her. Her sister had killed Gallifrey and regretted that the act had not killed her too.

The Doctor moved a piece, freeing her king from check.

Dawn shoved a piece forward, though she knew that the game would be a stalemate, “A tie. That hasn't changed. We always used to end these sort of games at a draw.”

A red pawn slipped forward.

“Checkmate,” the Doctor said, her voice holding no triumph over her victory.

Hiccuping a little, Dawn scanned the board with watery eyes, “Oh, I see. That was clever. I suppose you've picked up a few tricks through the centuries.”

“A few,” the Doctor shrugged, wondering if she should have left it at a draw. Or maybe that would have been another lie, another game of pretend, trying to make it seem like she was still the sister Dawn had loved.

Instead of resetting the pieces, Dawn picked up a bishop and turned it around in her hands, feeling the cool marble. The pieces were old and chipped, an antique when she and her sister had been small. Dawn had found them in a box in her room on the TARDIS along with most of her old things. Most of the rooms she had explored with filled with things from their life on Gallifrey. It felt odd, all those familiar things jumbled together in an unfamiliar place. Now it seemed like some sort of morbid museum.

“Has it been so bad? Living?” Dawn asked.

The Doctor looked away, “That's complicated.”

“And I'm too straightforward to handle complicated,” Dawn returned the bishop to the ranks.

“That's not what I meant.”

“But it's how you've acted.”

Unable to sit still any longer the Doctor shot to her feet and walked the length of the chess tables, then back again, grabbing the back of her chair like it would anchor her in place.

“Maybe it is. I just wanted to protect you. Yes, from complicated things. From horrible, muddy things and hard choices that tear out little pieces of your soul. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to pretend that I was the old me for a little while. Someone good, decent, kind, with a home and family to go back to someday. You're all I have left of that. Gallifrey, our family. Me. Me when I was like you. As long as I lied to you that me still existed.”

“I'm not you,” Dawn stood up too, “And you're not me. And I don't exist to be your—your symbol of innocence! You can't preserve me in amber and keep me stuck. Stuck in one single moment. You can't stop me from getting hurt, dirty, even a little broken!”

“But I could stop it for a little while!” The words ripped out of the Doctor on the edge of a sob, “Just for a little while.”

“I didn't ask you to do that! I just—I just--” Dawn ran her fingers through her hair, trying to find the words, “I just want to know: why didn't you take me with you?”

“What?”

“When you broke out of your time loop to go be a hero and get yourself killed—why didn't you take me with you? If I had been there I could have helped you. I could have saved you! Why did you leave me behind and go do all those difficult, horrible things all by yourself? Why didn't you—we were always together. You and me, always and forever.”

“It was a suicide mission. You would have ended up like me.”

“You should have given me the choice.”

The Doctor sank back into her chair, feeling every year of her nine hundred and thirty-three weighing down on her. She had been running from that moment, that choice to leave her sister behind, since the day she made it. But the truth was she had never escaped it. She was stuck in it, desperately clinging to the dead past.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't give you that choice. I understand if you hate me. I've done so many unforgivable things and I understand if you want to leave and never see me again. I'm sorry I'm not your sister anymore.”

Anger turned Dawn's tears hot and she swept her arm across the chessboard to scatter the pieces, “Stand up.”

The Doctor looked up, puzzled, tears shining on her face, “What?”

“You heard me! Stand up!”

The Doctor did.

Dawn smacked her sister across the side of the head. It wasn't hard enough to be painful but the Doctor put a hand to her head and looked at Dawn in astonishment.

Dawn grabbed her in a hug.

“You idiot. You stupid, stupid idiot! You'll always be my sister, always. Even if you aren't who you used to be.”

The Doctor stood frozen, trying to process the situation, her brain glitching at this unexpected turn of events. In the thousands of time she'd imagined this conversation she'd never imagined this.

“I'm . . . I'm not a hugger.”

“But I am.”

“You're not leaving?”

Nose pressed into her sister's shoulder, Dawn shook her head, “How will I ever get to know who you are now if I left now?”

The Doctor wrapped her arms around her sister and squeezed hard, “Oh. Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry--”

Her babbling was drowned in a sob that shook her body and all she could do was hold onto her sister and cry.

She wasn't going to be alone.


	28. Chapter 28

A firm push swung the art gallery door inward, but it stopped short of opening far enough to allow easy entry, catching on the uneven floor. The view of the gallery's interior, now visible through the partially open door, was of a space made up of varying levels of shadows. The shaft of light that had been permitted to enter only served to deepen the shadows on either side of it, illuminating only a sliver of bumpy floor and ripped up plants. Of Bog there was no visible sign, only the soft sound of tired sobbing.

This was not an encouraging sign.

The Doctor hesitated outside the door, considering the option of just pulling the door shut again. However, the door _had_ opened when she pushed it, which meant Bog had allowed her in willingly. She had half-hoped he wouldn't. If he had kept shoving her away she would have had an excuse to leave. Drop off the apology and fly on to the next thing.

“Fix this,” Dawn had said.

“I literally can't,” the Doctor had told her.

Yet the Doctor was still there, squeezing her way through the jammed door and stepping carefully into the dark. She shuffled over the rolling hills and jagged cliffs of the floor, one arm stretched out to feel her way through the darkness as the door closed behind her. She could only spare the one hand to scrabble at the dark, her other arm occupied with carrying a prop meant to accompany her apology.

Apology sort of thing, anyway.

“What do you want now?” Bog asked from behind his fortress of the up-swept floor and the dark, his voice hoarse, “Need another idiot to sacrifice himself?”

“If I needed an idiot,” the Doctor's hand found the console and she trailed her hand along it for balance until her path took it out of reach, “I'd look in the mirror. I need to return something that you lost.”

“Like my life?”

The words were said in sarcasm but they still made Bog's dry throat close up and fresh tears well up in his tired eyes. He was worn out with crying, but the tears kept coming because he was trapped in this room, probably alone, forever. There was no future to look forward to, no dreams to soothe the pain of the present.

It was funny. Bog hated being around people, he made every effort to be left alone. Now he was faced with a future of nothing but solitude and the thought was horrifying. Maybe that was why he had let the Doctor in.

Something bumped against his back while he was laying there on his side. Bog grunted, thinking the Doctor had walked into him in the dark. Something batted at the cables in his back.

“Watch where you're stepping,” Bog growled, turning up the lights so the Doctor would stop tripping over him. A yellow glow was cast over the room, just enough for Bog to see the Doctor's boots were in front of him, yet something was still moving behind him. He twisted around awkwardly to see what was going on.

“Crackers?” He blinked, meeting the yellow eyes of a brown tabby cat.

The cat gave a chirp of recognition, it's mouth lopsided from the number of teeth it was missing. It was apparently delighted just to be looked at and squinted its eyes lovingly at Bog. Bog turned over and carefully scratched the cat behind the ears. Its fur was greasy.

“Why is my cat here?” Bog asked, watching Crackers rub his chin against Bog's fingers, “My cat who died when I was fifteen?”

“Technically, he just disappeared.”

“You—did you go back in time and steal my cat?”

“I saw him when I got a look at your memories earlier. I knew he had disappeared and you never found him so I went back to that day and got a sample of his fur from your house. I used it to trace him to a town twenty miles from your house. He had climbed in the back of somebody's truck and taken a ride. Side note, cats don't like time travel and he scratched me five separate times before I got him here.”

“You timelooped my cat.”

“Yes.”

“My childhood cat who never learned how to bathe himself and was more grease and matted hair than actual cat.”

“Yup.”

“What, didn't they have a 'sorry I got you turned into a tree a merged with an alien supercomputer' card at the drugstore?”

“No. I checked.”

Crackers settled down against Bog's chest, tucking his paws underneath himself and starting up a purr. He had always had a weird purr, like the rattling engine of a car on its last legs. Seeing as Crackers had been eighteen years old when he vanished he had been on what should have been his last legs for years. He didn't seem to mind. He loved everything and everybody. If you looked at him he got excited that you had graced him with your attention.

“He still stinks,” Bog remarked.

“I know. I'm going to have to burn this jacket,” the Doctor said from up above.

Crackers rumbled happily, a warm little bundle of greasy fur and contentment. Bog stroked Crackers, the repetitive motion grounding Bog enough that his breathing evened out and some of the tension left him. His head cleared enough that he couldn't ignore how dry his mouth was.

When the Doctor crouched down and offered him a bottle of water Bog accepted it, even though he wanted to throw it back in her face.

“I suppose you want me to thank you,” He said after draining the bottle.

“No, but you owe me two bucks for the vending machine.”

“Take if off whatever you owe me for turning me into a tree and gluing me into an alien computer.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess you get this second bottle for free.”

“Hey,” Bog crinkled the bottle in his hand, digging the edge of his thumb under the label, “Am I really stuck here? Forever?”

He already knew the answer. He knew enough about the Doctor to understand that while she would trick him into thinking things would work out, she would not lie about the bad things. But she was still changeable, her answers changed so much, why not this one?

“Yes,” the Doctor said, the single word stabbing like a dagger into Bog's chest, letting the stewing mess of anger, fear, and sadness start to leak out again. Crackers wiggled closer to Bog's face and started nosing at the dampness left by tears.

“I can't fix this, Bog. I'm sorry.”

“I can't even die, can I? I mean, obviously I could, but, what would happen to the primrose if I did?”

“You're part of it now, without you it would die.”

“And all the history lost and Aunt Aura wouldn't be able to keep an eye on the Cheem here on Earth. I figured.”

Unless he decided to die as he lived—worthless and destructive to everyone around him—he was completely trapped.

“You know,” Bog said, his throat so tight that it was hard to speak, “It didn't really bother me that much to think I would die stopping the plant army.”

The Doctor said nothing.

“I'd have been finally doing something with my life. Making a meaningful sacrifice. I mean, I haven't had a future in a long time anyway. Finally get to be the hero I wanted to be.”

The dark had settled across the room again and Bog could only just make out the Doctor's outline sitting on the floor, absolutely still. He waited for her to say something, offer another apology so he could spurn it. She said nothing.

“Then,” Bog closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, Then, for one impossible moment I saw . . . I saw a future. A life worth living. I can't even remember the last time I wanted to live, and then you made me want to. I was excited to live, to see what happened next. The crazy, impossible woman did an impossible thing and gave me hope. It was a win either way. Die saving the world, or save the world and live. Really live again.”

Bog would have followed the Doctor anywhere. Into the sky, across the stars, far away from the drudgery of the mundane world and his empty life. He would have followed those golden eyes, those golden eyes that held galaxies. But those galaxies, that universe inside of her, was only beautiful at a distance. The closer Bog got to the Doctor the more he saw the great chasms that had been ripped between the constellations, filled with the suffering of centuries, the pain that fired her to save people, the ruthlessness that overtook any kindness she had to offer.

“But it was all a lie,” Bog said, “There was never anything there. I was never worth anything. Just a means to the end of cleaning up pretty boy's messes. Everything else was just a lie. A trick.”

“It's worse than that,” the Doctor said, her voice crackling a little after her long silence, “I lied, I deceived, I tricked you . . . but I also used the truth to trick you.”

Crackers stretched and flopped on his side, legs out, back feet braced on a cable. Bog rubbed the cat's stomach, glad of the excuse to fidget.

“I tried not to like you, Bog. I try not to like anyone. It's terrible, to like people, know their faces, then watch them burn because of what you did or failed to do. But I liked you and then . . . you kissed me.”

“And you saw an opportunity?” Bog asked sarcastically.

“I saw stars, actually. I realized all in a rush how much I liked you, it made me dizzy. I also realized bad it was going to be when you found out what I really was. But I tricked myself, too. I imagined for one crazy, impossible moment that I had found . . . I don't know. Someone who didn't know what I used to be, just me as I am, and somehow still wanted to stay.”

“Has Dawn left, then?”

“Not yet. But she'll leave in the end. I want her to stay. I should make her go. Monsters don't get happy endings. Now, later, it doesn't matter when. Dawn will leave and it will be with a broken heart. That's how everyone leaves.”

“It's your own fault,” Bog said, refusing to feel sympathy.

“I know.”

“All this is your fault. You and your crazy ex.”

“Roland is a monster of my own making,” the Doctor sighed, “I'm sorry I led you right into his trap. I'm sorry I kissed you. I'm sorry I liked you.”

“Are you going to leave, now that you apologized?” Bog asked roughly. He hated her, he hated her so much and he didn’t care that she sounded tired and sad. He didn’t care that he knew something of the painful journey that had brought her to this place in life. It didn’t matter, she had still used him.

“I assumed you would want me to,” the Doctor replied, voice neutral.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Oh,” she paused, “Oh, now? Yes?”

The Doctor unfolded her legs and braced a hand on the floor to push herself up.

Bog's hand darted out, dragging cables and making Crackers chirp in surprise, and he grabbed the cuff of the Doctor's jacket, “No!”

“No?”

“I mean--”

When she left Bog would be alone. The pitiful scraps of his dream of a life worth living would be be scattered in the wake of her departure.

The Doctor sat back, and remarked, apropos of nothing, “Your night sky needs some stars.”

The sonic screwdriver whistled and Bog could feel it tweaking and pulling at things in the primrose and the computer. The black void of the room was sprinkled with stars, glittering swirls of galaxies trailing from the ceiling to the walls and floor so that they were not just sitting under a night sky, but right in the middle of it.

She touched the back of his hand, “I won't go until you ask.”

They sat in silence, watching the stars.


	29. Chapter 29

Roland woke up in a small, white-walled room.

He was slumped over a plastic table, the side of his face resting in a not inconsiderable amount of his own drool. He felt lightheaded and oddly chilled and he couldn't quite put his finger on why.

“Who knocked me out?” He asked, sitting up, pulling a crisp handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his face, making a discreet check of the room for witnesses to his current state.

There was no one there but the Doctor.

Also, there were no doors.

“Sunny did,” the Doctor said in answer to his question, leaning back in a folding chair, her feet on the table. She threw a paper airplane and watched it spiral to the floor, joining the rest of its un-airworthy flock in a crumpled pile. From the size of the pile it could be assumed that she had been passing quite a lot of time waiting for Roland to wake up.

“Who's Sunny?” Roland asked, refolding his handkerchief.

The Doctor folded another airplane, rolling her eyes.

“Alright. Perhaps a better question would be: where are we?”

“The end.”

“Literally or metaphorically?”

“A little of both?”

“Dearest, assuming an air of mystery doesn't suit you at all. It's just you and I here, there's no one you have to play a part for. I already know all your secrets.”

Roland brushed dust off his sleeves and reached up to restore order to his hair. His fingers found an uneven stubble where his naturally luxurious hair should have been. He slapped his hands over the top, sides, and back of his head, somehow hoping that a little searching would reveal that his hair was not gone, simply momentarily displaced.

When nothing was discovered except more stubble and loose hairs tickling the inside of his shirt collar Roland made a strangled, wheezing noise.

“I left Dawn and Sunny unsupervised,” the Doctor tapped her newest plane against her fingers, “I really should stop doing that. Anyway, she charged me with telling you that this is revenge for breaking my heart and hurting Bog. I'm also supposed to inform you that the scalping process was recorded for posterity.”

Roland wheezed, hands clutching his ravaged head.

The Doctor sent another plane to its death.

It took Roland several minutes to collect himself and speak again, gathering the tattered remains of his dignity around himself.

“This has all been unnecessarily childish, darlin'. If you would just agree to talk about your feelings like a grownup I wouldn't have to resort to such tactics as I have and you wouldn't be sulking. How are we _ever_ going to work on rebuilding this relationship if you refuse to see that it's in danger of falling apart?”

The Doctor took her feet off the table and sat properly in her chair, looking Roland in the eye, “I've never been sure, Roland, if you are willingly this delusional or if it's an act to get on my nerves.”

Roland pursed his lips and tilted his head in consideration, “A little of both?”

The Doctor looked irritated, but continued, “It's been an effective shield for you, my guilt. Reminding me that it's my fault that you're like this, my fault you're harming innocents. Somehow you manage to play the victim.”

“Look, that home-wrecking tree is hardly an innocent! Coming between us, breaking up our marriage--”

“What about the fifteen people that died today because of your plant army?” the doctor pulled out a newspaper and tossed it on the table, “I checked the numbers. I'm still waiting to hear about the people in critical condition, but so far your score is fifteen.”

Roland shrugged one shoulder, laughing and tossing his head in a way that would have bounced his curls if he had still had them, “Ants don't notice if their lives get cut short a day or two. It's your weakness, caring about insects, not mine. I only care about that meddling shrub. Or should I? I seem to infer that my little garden party was stopped, which means the tree must have died, yes?”

“And with Bog dead I would rush back into your arms?”

“More or less, sweet-pea.”

The Doctor stood up and walked around the table to stand in front of Roland. She lifted a hand, fingers posed as if to brush across his cheek.

A smug grin spread across Roland's face, “Aw, buttercup, I'd knew you'd come around--”

The Doctor's hand darted forward, quick as a striking snake, flipped up the collar of Roland's shirt and snatched a small electronic device from where it had been pinned to the fabric.

The smile dropped off of Roland's face as the small device pulled free. An electronic shimmer clouded his features, blocky pixels and flickering lines obscuring the look of wide-eyed horror that had replaced the smile.

Roland threw himself back, knocking over the chair as he bolted to his feet and stumbled into the wall, covering his face, hiding it from the Doctor.

“Give it back!”

“You've always been so proud of your face,” the Doctor turned the gadget back and forth in the light, inspecting its circuitry, “And now you hide it from me?”

Roland gave a strained giggle, “I'm not so sure you could stomach the sight of your handiwork, buttercup! How long have you known about my . . . condition?”

“I've always known. I let you have your vanity because you had precious little else to comfort you.”

“What changed?”

“The woman who loved you . . . she died today. There wasn't much left, to be sure, but traces of her survived, in her guilt. Even some of her nobility lingered. Or maybe I was just doing a fantastic job of pretending. Then, today, you held a piece of broken glass to my sister's throat. Today your nasty little hologram told my sister the truth about me.”

“So the plot has advanced that far, then?” Roland said, face still to the wall, “I really have missed a lot!”

“You told her the truth, Roland, and the truth broke the illusion. She knew her sister was dead and I couldn't pretend otherwise, not anymore. Dawn held the memory of her sister, of her nobility. Bog believed in the story, too. The story of the lonely, noble wanderer. Now neither of them believe in her.”

“Wait, is that tree dead or not?”

“As always, Roland, you're missing the point. She's gone. Her and her guilt were the only things shielding you from . . . well, from _me_.”

“Oh, _darlin'_ ,” Roland's attempt at a mocking laugh was ruined by the fear that made his voice wobble as he sat on the floor, head in his arms, “You've carried your guilt all this time and now you expect me to suddenly believe you forgive yourself? Just like that? Forgive yourself for dropping me back into the fires of Gallifrey to die?”

“The woman I was grieved over the man you were. But when I realized that woman was dead I also realized that the man she loved is dead too. You wore his face to torment me, but you aren't him. He would _never_ do what you've done.”

“I wouldn't have done any of those things if you hadn't _left me behind to die_!” Roland shot to his feet, springing forward to shove his face just inches short of the Doctor's, “If you hadn't then _this_ would never have happened!”

Black chasms had been slashed into Roland's skin, the tears revealing neither blood nor bone, but a glimpse into the stormy time vortex. Black was eating at the edges of the slashes, pulling and twisting Roland's face until it hardly looked like it belonged to a Time Lord.

The Doctor had flown from the closing timelock, leaving her home and her family behind to die. Only Dawn, her timeloop chamber relocated to the TARDIS, was saved. But somehow Roland followed them, hitched a makeshift escape pod to the TARDIS, dragging them all back down to the planet. Half phased into the vortex, unable to fully shift, the TARDIS would have been torn apart.

Except that the Doctor cut the cord.

Sent Roland falling, caught in time, outside time, being torn to pieces as he fell.

Yet, somehow, he survived. Patched together with a crack in time tearing him up from the inside. It would have ripped apart the world around him if he hadn't created a shield to contain it. A shield fashioned to look like his old face, to keep him in the shape of a Time Lord and prevent him from slipping fully into the vortex.

The Doctor looked into Roland's face, her expression hard and unforgiving.

“I like to think,” she said evenly, “that the man I married would have cut the cord himself to save his wife and sister. Now, there's something I have to do. I wish I could say I was doing it out of nobility, for the sake of all the people who had died as collateral damage of your insane schemes. But it's really because I am angry. So very angry.”

The Doctor's face was hard and white, her eyes black with anger. She raise a hand and snapped her fingers, one white wall rolling away at the sound. Outside a storm raged, a storm of time, a roiling mass of past, present, and future.

“You should have been torn apart in the vortex, Roland, except that you froze that moment to keep the shreds of yourself intact. But that moment wants to happen, _needs_ to happen.”

“No . . .” Roland fled to the other side of the room, pressing himself into a corner, as far from the storm as possible, “No, you won't! You can't! You would never--”

“The woman who would never . . . I told you. She died today. She would never do this, but _I_ will.”

She snapped her fingers and another wall slid away.

“You—you can't do this!” the rips in Roland's faces were growing, ripping not only through his face but through the air in front of him, “If you do this I win! That's right, you'll be no better than me! You're the hero, I'm the villain—that's the game we play! I'll win! The hero will fall and I'll win!”

Another snap of the Doctor's fingers banished the remaining walls. The table and chairs slid off the platform and were sucked into the cold storm. The paper airplanes finally took flight, the small white flock gliding into the flickering dark.

“Congratulations,” the Doctor said, opening a door that hadn't been there before, the blue shape of the TARDIS appearing on the platform. She stepped inside, the platform sliding away just as her foot left it. There wasn't much left of Roland except his eyes, allowing the Doctor to look him in the face as she turned and said, “You win.”

The TARDIS doors shut and the bubble the Doctor had extended around it collapsed, the platform breaking up. By the time the last pieces of it vanished into the vortex Roland was completely gone.

* * *

 

Dawn and Sunny looked up when the gallery door opened to admit the Doctor.

“Sh!” Dawn raised a finger to her lips, “Boggy is still updating!”

A block had been raised by the wall into a bed-like shape and Bog was laying on it, asleep, Crackers curled up on his chest. Dawn had thoughtfully tucked a blanket over him.

As Bog had calmed down his awareness of his connection to the primrose had sharpened and he had found the constant stream of information disconcerting. It was controlled, but he said he found it weird to know so much information off-hand about his mother's genetic code. Dawn and the Doctor had helped him work out a way to wall all that out and make a few other adjustments to the system since it was still a bit scrambled from the recent changes.

The updates took a lot of processing power and Bog had fallen asleep without the primrose automatically stabilizing his body. Once the updates were complete that would resume but in the meantime Bog enjoyed a well-deserved nap.

The Doctor had taken the opportunity to “take care of a few things”, which Dawn found suspicious but did not challenge. Upon her sister's return Dawn asked, “You took awhile, everything okay?”

“Roland got loose.”

“What?! How—we need to find him!”

“I followed him. He . . . _disappeared_.”

“Oh! Before I got to see his reaction to his new haircut!” Dawn stamped her foot, then remembered Bog was asleep and winced. But a quick look showed that he hadn't stirred. She continued in a softer voice, “There's got to be a way to trace him!”

“Later. We have more important things to do right now.”

“I guess. Okay. Sunny, do you still have those sleep patches? We might need those later.”

“I am armed and ready,” Sunny held up the box.

Dawn gave him a thumbs up.

The Doctor kicked at the floor next to Bog's makeshift bed until a cube rose up to serve as a stool. She sat down on it, her face white with fatigue.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Dawn whispered, “Did Roland do something again?”

“Later,” the Doctor said, “I'll tell you about it later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the end! Will be more!


	30. Chapter 30

“Do you feel better now?”

The Doctor picked up the bridge of Bog's guitar. The rest of the guitar was in several pieces on the floor, one or two of them still attached to the bridge by the strings.

“I'm sorry,” Bog had dropped his face into his hands.

His hands.

Sunny had brought Bog's guitar over from the other TARDIS. For a moment the sight of the guitar case had made Bog brighten up a little because it was a familiar thing in the middle of a day of insanity. That guitar was smoky bars and sunny street corners, duets and solos, a way he coaxed a little beauty around himself, the pattern of notes and chords imposed over a jumbled, broken world.

It had been one of the last things in life that Bog had bothered to care about.

When Bog had accepted the case from Sunny and began to fumble with the clasps the brief spark of happiness was stamped out as reality crashed back down. Tears of frustration in his eyes, Bog ignored reality for as long as he could, pulling his guitar free and letting it settle in his arms. His hands arranged themselves without his prompting, the fit of the guitar ingrained in his muscles.

Except his arms scratched lines in the guitar's body and his hands . . . his hands were all _wrong_. He had known they were useless now but in that moment he had forgotten. When he remembered the sight of the guitar was suddenly repulsive. It was a worthless shell of what it had been, the thousands of songs it played meaningless now that he could add no more to their number.

There was no point to it.

There was no point to _him_.

He smashed the guitar because it should have meant something, because the destruction of it should have hurt him.

But it didn't.

He was just tired.

“I'll get you a new one,” the Doctor said, brisk and matter-of-fact, “I can do that much, at least.”

“It doesn't matter,” Bog lifted his head to watch her carry away the pieces, wishing he had the energy left to be angry.

“Hey,” Sunny said, rubbing his hands together uncomfortably, “I'm sorry, man. I wasn't thinking when I brought that in.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“This is . . . all kind of my fault. The necklace, your guitar—if I hadn't run off with them then all this—all this _stuff_ wouldn't have happened.”

The kid was just so earnest, so sincere, that if Bog had felt like himself it would have set his teeth on edge. Sunny was, well, whole. Life hadn't chipped bits and pieces off him, hadn't cracked open his heart. Bog envied that wholeness. He had seen it from the first time he had met the kid, had resented him for it. Now he was glad of it. Glad that somebody had a future to look forward to.

“It would have happened anyway. In some way or another,” Bog rubbed the flat of his hand up and down his arm, the snag of splinters and the base of the cables catching his palm, “Fixed point in time, apparently.”

“But . . . it could have been better?”

“I guess. It's my own fault. Usually is. Doesn't matter.”

Bog leaned back, closing his eyes and feeling the pulse of data in the primrose. It had been settling in, always present even behind the walls Dawn and the Doctor had built. The information was at his fingertips, the slightest thought opening up channels to it. So much of it. And he could know it, but he couldn't understand it. He might find a way to fix his hands, but the actual process would be beyond his understanding.

“You okay?”

Dawn laid a hand on Bog's shoulder and his eyes flew open, the touch startling him out of the data about how Cheem could repair and regrow limbs. He wondered how much time had passed, how long he had been wandering among the knowledge of long dead scientists. Sunny and the Doctor were gone, and at some point Crackers had settled on Bog's lap.

“Not really.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

The girl sat down next to him on his block and hugged herself. Her eyes had been clear this morning, full of light and joy. They were clouded now and there was a resemblance to her sister in her face a manner, a resemblance that hadn't been there before.

“Everything's gone, Boggy.”

“Yeah.”

“There's nothing left.”

Bog wanted to agree with that. But he couldn't. Not to that girl, more full of life than Bog had ever been, the light in her eyes clouded but not extinguished. A big piece had been chipped out of her heart, but it looked to have been a clean break that would heal over, for there was so much left in her life that would fill the empty space.

“If there was nothing left,” Bog said, “It probably wouldn't hurt so much. Because if there was nothing left you wouldn't have to get up in the morning. I've got nothing. I think you've got a lot.”

“I'm sorry,” Dawn pulled up her legs and rested her chin on her knees, “You've had a bad enough day.”

“It's okay. I think I kind of like you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And Sunny. You two have sort of . . . grown on me.”

The words were out before Bog realized the pun. He slapped a hand over his mouth, hoping in vain that Dawn hadn't caught it. He risked turning to look at her and saw from the way she was biting her lips shut that she had indeed caught it.

The two of them stared at each other.

Bog broke first, snorting and covering his eyes while weak giggles began to shake him. Dawn followed after him just a second later, her laughter breathy and almost silent, making her shoulders shake and a few stray tears squeeze out of her eyes. Crackers hopped off Bog's lap with a mew of complaint.

“Boggy, that was terrible!”

“It wasn't on purpose! It's your sister's fault!”

“What in particular?”

The smell of smoke seemed to have followed the Doctor into the room. When she had left, Bog was not sure, but she had returned, soot smudged across her nose and a takeout bag in hand.

“What happened?” Dawn asked, still giggling.

“I got doughnuts. You asked me to.”

“Yes, but . . . three hours ago.”

“And I did some thinking.”

“Where? By a forest fire?”

“Volcano, actually. There was a thing. A thing happened. I don't think any ash got into the bag.”

“What were you thinking about?” Dawn accepted the bag and extracted a blueberry cake doughnut from the sticky interior. There was chocolate frosting from another doughnut stuck to it, “It seems to have been hard on the pastries.”

“Life. The universe. Everything. That it'll take ten years to get Bog's hands back to human standards of use. I don't want to expose you to the time vortex again, not when you're hooked up to the primrose like you are. And it just generally isn’t healthy. Any thoughts from ancient Cheem society about that?”

“Uh,” Bog was trying to figure out if he was mad at the Doctor right now, or touched that she had been thinking of how to help him, “I've been sort of looking, but most of what I've found involves chopping my hands off and regrowing them and that's . . . not exactly awesome.”

“Don't be a wimp. I did that once. It wasn't so bad.”

“I can't tell . . . I can't tell if you're kidding or not.”

“I strive to maintain an air of mystery.”

“I'm not chopping off my hands.”

“What else can we try, then?”

“I don't know! I don't understand any of this stuff! I just rent it space in my head.”

“It's a little more than that, don't you think?”

“I guess.”

Closing his eyes again, Bog skimmed over the surface of his recent searches. There was just too much of it. Looking at it made him depressed, there was no way he could ever sift through it all.

“It's ironic,” Bog said, opening his eyes, “I've got complete control of the primrose now. I could do . . . well, a _lot_. I could play with the genetic code of my entire family, or any Cheem on Earth. Or grow another army, or even a spaceship. All that, and I can't even leave this room.”

“Do you want a doughnut?” Dawn asked, “There's one with strawberry jelly. I know because it bled all over the cinnamon roll.”

The Doctor had been thoughtfully consuming what had once been a glazes doughnut but was now a pastry Frankenstein, fused with the icing of at least three other types of doughnuts. She paused in mid-bite, holding the doughnut to her mouth while she stared off into the distance.

She dropped the doughnut and swallowed the bite without chewing it, coughing when she demanded, “Say that again! Again, again, again!”

“The strawberry doughnut bled over the cinnamon roll?” Dawn offered, “And how many did you get, there are at least a dozen--”

“No!” the Doctor grabbed her head and spun around, “No! Not you! Him! Bog! What did you just say? Say it again!”

“I can't leave this room?”

“No, no, no! You two are so _slow_ , I can't even—plant army!” she pointed at Bog, “ Plant army! You could grow a whole army! You could grow a whole army!”

“Repeating that isn't making anything clearer.”

“You beautiful, simple, brilliant tree!” the Doctor was laughing, “We can cheat! It's a cheat! We can beat the system!”

“I don't get it?” Dawn asked, regarding her sister with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

The Doctor grabbed her sister's face and squished her cheeks, “Sweet, angelic, wonderful child, Bog could control the plant soldiers! He climbed right into their dense wooden heads, saw what they saw, felt what they felt!”

“Yes?” Dawn said, her lips distorted, but her tone indicated she was beginning to comprehend what her sister was raving about, “He could--?”

“Yes!”

“I could _what_?”

The Doctor released Dawn and squashed Bog's face, “You could grow a new body, a duplicate of yourself! Climb inside of it, see through it's eyes, live through it! We could even get it looking human again because it would be your body, just, a second body!”

“I don't—”

“You, this body, stays here, in sleep mode. You project your mind into the new body and get on with being difficult and growling at everybody.”

“I . . .” Bog took the Doctor by the wrists and pulled her hands away from his face, “New brain . . . old memories?”

“Yes, exactly! Exactly!”

“But . . . it wouldn't be me?”

“Of course it would be you! It would be grown out of your genetic materials, piloted by you, this brain,” the Doctor poked his forehead, “It would be all you, Bog, walking out of here, as promised!”

The Doctor's smile faded as she caught up with herself, probably seeing the blank look on Bog's face when she took a step back, “In a way, that is. I know this isn't what you wanted, it isn't what I made you think . . .”

Piloting the plant army, when he'd seized control of that first soldier, Bog had experienced the input to its senses. For a few moments he had worn it, almost been it. And if it were possible to grow something specifically designed to look like him—but it _was_ possible. Data seethed in his mind, stirred up by his questioning train of thought, a dozen different pieces of data relating to the subject demanding his attention.

“It would really work?”

“I really think it would!” Dawn had put on her glasses and was staring at her doughnut so intently it might have been thought the pastry held some great secret of the universe, “I mean, give us half an hour to work out the specifics, but the technology is there, no question! Maybe slap together something to keep you from accidentally jumping back and forth between bodies without meaning to, but . . . yes!”

Dawn crammed the rest of her doughnut in her mouth and grabbed Bog in a hug. He laughed weakly and might even have hugged her back if she weren't sitting on some of the cables, limiting the movement of his arms.

“Really?” Bog asked the Doctor, afraid to hope again.

“Broden Broderick King,” the Doctor stepped forward and took his face in her hands, this time gently, so she could look down into his eyes or so that he could look up into hers, “I'm going to fix this.”

Her eyes were impossibly deep, windows to a pain so great that Bog couldn't begin to comprehend it, sorrow that was darkness between stars. But there were stars and they were beautiful, shining in spite of the darkness, refusing to be consumed by it. Trying to give a little light to others who had their own darkness to dispel.

Bog kissed her.

“Oh!” Dawn squeaked.

“Oh,” the Doctor said when the light, quick kiss had ended, her hands dropping from his face, “oh?”

“I think I believe you,” Bog framed her face with his hands, pulling her down until their foreheads touched, “I think . . . I think I do. That I get to go home. That I get to walk out of here. I think I believe that.”

“Well, I mean,” the Doctor's eyes darted off to the side, “It's going to still be awhile before we can get the second body back to a human appearance, but, yes, you will be able to--”

Bog kissed her again.

This time she kissed him back.

“I _knew_ something was going on with you two,” Dawn said, eating another doughnut, watching the proceedings with her chin in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some happiness for you guys :)


	31. Beginnings

The day was soft and gray, a smooth layer of clouds spread across the sky. The sweeping fields of tall green grass were more vibrant without undiluted sunlight bleaching them. The air was cool, heavy with the smell of rich, damp earth.

A few stray drizzling drops of rain fell onto a square patch of dirt that had been cleared of grass. Already a few tender sprouts had pushed themselves up from the loose dirt, undeterred by the loss of the previous generation.

The loose patch of earth shifted.

The newborn sprouts trembled.

A distant flash of lightning lit up a corner of the sky, bright and silent. The wind had died down to a sigh, the world going still in anticipation.

Thunder rumbled and crashed, the wind picked up sharply, blowing in dark clouds, lightning flashed again, and the patch of earth began to heave upward, as if the ground were taking in a breath.

Thunder brought rain crashing down.

The dirt rose up.

A gnarled hand thrust its way into the open, just as another flash of lightning burst overhead, turning the hand into a black silhouette of clawing roots.

“Alright,” a muffled voice said, “did that look as cool as I think it did?”

“Totally.”

Sunny squished through the mud in tall boots, an umbrella held in one hand, a camera in the other. Dawn trudged in from the opposite direction, similarly equipped.

“Ah, the crops are doing so well this year! The nerds are ripe for picking!” the Doctor called from somewhere out of sight.

“I'm going to hug you when I get out of here!” Bog called back, struggling in the mud.

“Just you try it, mudball.”

“These are going to look so cool when we put these clips together,” Dawn said, tucking the camera away in its bag, “How's this one fit, Boggy?”

“The legs are on the right way around this time,” Bog said, clawing his way out of the mud, shaking rain drops and momentary double vision out of his eyes.

“That was _one time_ ,” the Doctor shouted, still not visible.

“She's putting newspapers down in the Tardis,” Dawn explained, “she's tired of cleaning mud out of the wiring.”

“She made me get in the cracks with a toothbrush,” Sunny remarked, resting his umbrella on his shoulder so he could grab Bog's hand.

Dawn took Bog's other hand, “Okay, and pull!”

The arm Sunny was pulling on snapped off at the elbow.

Bog looked at the yellow liquid oozing out of the stump.

Sunny looked at the arm he was still holding by the hand.

“Bog . . .?” Dawn began.

“I'm out,” Bog snapped. He slumped forward into the mud.

Sunny finally came to himself and dropped the arm, flailing backwards to get away from it.

* * *

 

 “This one a better fit?”

Bog squinted. Dawn's bright face and fluffy halo of hair coming into focus as she bent over him. The sunlight was bright, the outline of it around Dawn was blinding and Bog threw a hand over his eyes.

“He's a shade plant, remember?”

A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see the Doctor had unfurled an enormous yellow and red beach umbrella.

“He needs _some_ sun,” Dawn insisted.

“I need a drink,” Bog's voice was hoarse and his mouth was dry. He wondered if that was a good sign or bad sign. Every time he tried on a new body and felt good it usually ended up that his nerve endings were dead or something.

The Doctor poured a cup of water over Bog's head.

“Not what I meant.”

“But it's what you're going to get, my teetotaling tuber. Plants don't drink hard liquor and it therefore follows that you don't drink it either. Anyway,” the Doctor crouched down, the umbrella closing in further on them, “how does it fit?”

“Gimme a ruddy minute, love,” Bog wheezed, feeling his lungs reluctantly inflating, the rigid segments of bark on his chest shifting with each breath.

“Don't smother him,” Dawn chided.

She pulled the umbrella a little further away so the world was a little less smudged yellow and red. There were some green smudges too now. Bog flexed his hands, his joints moving easily, and touched his thumb to his fingertips, feeling the softness there. That was an improvement, definitely.

“Peach fuzz,” the Doctor said, taking his hand and twisting it this way and that, “for a tree you've got really soft hands. The insides, anyway. Backs are still nice and crunchy. Imagine if you hit someone with that. Total annihilation. They'd be picking splinters out of their face for months.”

“Mm,” Bog took the Doctor's hands in his, savoring the newly returned sensitivity in his fingers. It had taken six tries to get his hands right, to turn them from stiff, thick roots to something that he could imagine using to play the guitar with again. He could feel the callouses on the Doctor's palm, the chipped coat of polish on her fingernails.

“He's getting touchy-feely again,” the Doctor called to Dawn, “maybe we need to reboot him.”

“I keep _telling_ you,” Dawn sighed, “that's _normal_.”

“How's the connection?” the Doctor freed herself and shone the screwdriver in Bog's eyes, “Any lagging? Double vision? Double sensation? Teeth growing in sideways?”

“Nope. Help me out of here and let's see if everything stays where it should.”

“Your ears sliding off that time was weird and disturbing,” Dawn grimaced.

“Then why are you keeping them in a jar?”

“. . . science?”

“Hey, man,” Sunny took Bog's hand, “if your arm falls off again I am done. Completely done. I'm almost at my limit of zombie body horror.”

“And how do you think it feels to be _me_?”

“If I planted your arm,” Dawn said thoughtfully, “would it grow another Bog? Would it be a tiny Bog? A pocket Bog?”

“Neither your nor your sister are allowed to play with my genetic material without my permission. I thought we established this. And there has _got_ to be an easier way to do this!”

Bog struggled to pull free of the ground, snapping the tiny rootlets that had spread out around the body while it grew. It stung where they broke off, leaving tiny yellow droplets of blood beading on the skin. The skin was still segmented bark, but patterned to be smoother and not grate together so badly at the edges. Only a Cheem body could be grown using the methods Bog and the Doctor had worked out from the data in the primrose. It would take years for a body to slowly take on a more human structure.

“Maybe we should try pods,” the Doctor said. She was pulling hard, but Bog's arm was still attached, “big old pods, bodysnatcher style.”

“Why didn't you make that suggestion half a dozen bodies ago?!”

“I was thinking trees, not peas.”

“Stupid!” Dawn smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand, knocking her glasses askew, “We got too hung up on plants and forgot all about the human aspects! A pod would be so much easier to program a template into and minimize the need for roots to gain nutrients because the body would be suspended in--”

“Miracle-gro?” the Doctor suggested.

“Hate you,” Bog muttered, getting to his feet and brushing dirt off. After the first attempt at growing and piloting a new body Bog had quickly figured out how to add a simple, separate, fabric-like growth in the shape of pants.

“Good, good, the cheekbones came out nicely,” the Doctor nodded in satisfaction before reaching up and pinching Bog's dirt-encrusted cheeks.

Bog was embarrassed to feel himself blush, but also pleased. The body felt real. Almost as if it were him and not just a remote-controlled drone. His real body—real self—was still firmly rooted to the inside of Roland's former Tardis. With a thought Bog could be pulled right back into that prison. Right back into reality.

“Someone is in loooove,” Dawn giggled.

“I'm allowed to appreciate an aesthetically pleasing face!” the Doctor huffed.

“It's the first one I've ever seen you appreciate, sis. Or consistently recognize.”

“He's easy. He's the one covered in bark.”

Bog smacked the back of her head.

“Hey!”

“Oh, _so_ sorry. My reflexes must still be off kilter.”

The Doctor punched him in the stomach.

“I hope this isn't standard courtship stuff for Time Ladies,” Sunny said, standing on his tiptoes behind Dawn so he could rest his chin on her shoulder, “I bruise easily.”

“Sunny, I've seen you fall off a ten foot wall and walk away without a scratch. I'm theorizing that you're either an alien with enhanced resilience or a sudden leap in human evolution.”

“Don't disrespect my skills like this. I am one hundred percent token human and have collected enough bruises and broken bones to take down an elephant before I reached true mastery of parkour.”

“It isn't natural, it just isn't natural. And these bizarre courtship rituals are exclusive to my sister and her lovesick Larch.”

“I'm going out on a limb here and guessing Larch is some kind of tree.”

“Limb,” Dawn snickered, “that's a good one.”

* * *

 

Bog's leather jacket still fit.

Was it 'still' when the body he was wearing had never worn the jacket before?

His tattoos were gone. No, again, the tattoos had never been inked into the tough skin of this body, on the twined bundles of roots that mimicked the shape of arms. The hands he flexed had never picked up a guitar, the feet that were digging their toes into the dirt had never walked on Earth.

Because they weren't on Earth at the moment.

“One of seven Earth-like planets orbiting a dwarf-star called Trappist-1, recently discovered by Danish scientists,” Dawn had explained, “rather less sunlight than Earth, but suitable for a weird Bog garden. Humans will start colonizing in the thirtieth century. Until then it's like your own personal planet.”

Bog had viewed the scenery on the monitors, his interest piqued by a brand-new, untouched planet, “Can I name it, then?”

“Frank,” the Doctor immediately suggested, “or Earthy. Not Earth. Nearth. Frank Nearth. Frank Nearth the Second.”

“You are not allowed to name anything. Ever.”

“What's wrong with New Earth?” Sunny asked.

“Already taken. Or will be,” Dawn shrugged.

“Also that's totally boring,” the Doctor added, “hey, what about calling it Broden? Planet Broden.”

“Never mind,” Bog said, “we're not naming the planet. Not if I have to deal with this.”

Now Bog stood outside Roland's hair salon Tardis, watching Trappist-1 sink behind the horizon. A pristine planet, untouched by the industry of humans—or any intelligent species—and a cheap hair salon was parked in the middle of a grassy meadow, a neon 'open' sign blinking red and blue in the growing dark.

“I guess we've got a keeper,” the Doctor said.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I don't seem to be shedding anything important.”

The Doctor took Bog's hand.

And stabbed his fingertip with a needle.

“Yup,” she said, ignoring Bog's yelp, “nerve endings are good.”

“Wasn't there some nicer way of checking that?!”

“Don't be a sapling about it. You're not even bleeding.”

“Hmf.”

“Connection is holding. Since you're real body is hooked up to a Tardis you're very unlikely to experience signal loss, no matter where or when you might be. All data you collect in your avatar body will be relayed back to the original so even if the avatar body is damaged you won't lose any—any . . . “

The Doctor stammered her way to a stop when Bog brushed his fingertips over her cheek. Was it the newness of his body that made it seem that his fingers were more sensitive than before? Or maybe it was just the novelty of touching a person with affection.

“I guess . . . I guess that's a nicer way to check nerve sensitivity,” the Doctor remarked awkwardly. She hitched up her shoulder and squinted her eyes when Bog's hand traveled down her neck, but it was only a few moments before she was leaning into his touch, eyes half-shut.

“This really is me, isn't it?” Bog asked quietly, “My body? My hand?”

“Do you want me to be scientific of philosophic about it?” the Doctor had her arms folded tight in front of herself, making no move to reach out to Bog, “I've got a good repertoire built up.”

“I wouldn't mind a straightforward comforting lie.”

“I'm good at lies. Bad at comforting.”

Bog let his fingers coast over the back of her neck, counting the vertebrae that made gentle rises in her skin. The contact helped him feel real. It made the Doctor feel real. She was a strange being, too big inside for him to fully understand, too quick for him to catch unless she stood still and let herself be caught. She was always running and even now, in this moment, it didn't feel like she had really stopped.

“New bodies . . . I've had loads. They come with memories of worlds you've walked a thousand times, but never walked before. At least _you_ get to say the same height. I had to lower all the shelves so I could reach things without a step ladder.”

“Doesn't it bother you? Not to be yourself anymore?”

The Doctor shrugged, “Sometimes there are things you're glad to leave behind.”

Bog's fingers had been pushing the Doctor's hair back behind her ear and he paused, looking at the familiar shape of unfamiliar hands.

Hands that had never held a gun.

“I see,” Bog gently rubbed away a smudge of dirt near the Doctor's hairline, “I see.”

“You wake up and it all begins again. There's the whole universe, new again, waiting for you, and you've got a brand new set of eyes that see everything differently than you've ever seen them before. I'm glad we got your eyes right. I was afraid we might get the wrong shade.”

“Hm,” Bog toyed with the lapels of the Doctor's coat, “this is all a new beginning, is what you're saying.”

“Things begin and end every day. Some are just more noticeable than others. Today you set a clock to count down the ten years, more or less, until you're avatar is more human than Cheem. And I've set my own timer . . .”

The Doctor looked out over the fields and Bog followed her gaze to Sunny and Dawn. The two were pulsing the light on the end of Dawn's screwdriver to attract fireflies. Or some sort of firefly creatures. They actually looked more like flying, glowing spiders.

Bog tugged on the Doctor's coat, making her turn away from the scene. Dawn and Sunny were beginning something, something bright and fresh. They carried their own hurts and worries, but the both of them were fundamentally sound and happy in a way that Bog and the Doctor could never be. Sooner or later Dawn's path would diverge from her sister's.

“She's not gone yet,” Bog said softly.

“That's one of the things about being a Time Lord,” the Doctor said, her head lowered, hiding her eyes in shadow, “you see more endings than you should.”

“Doesn't that just mean you see more beginnings, too?”

The Doctor looked up, slight frown on her face while she took in his words. Something seemed to click into place because she laughed, her painted lips twisting into a reluctant smile, “I think I'm starting to see why I keep you around, Bog.”

“I thought it was for my good looks.”

“I guess you're alright. For a tree. I wonder if you'll turn red and orange in the autumn, because that would be spectacular.”

Bog tugged on her coat, pulling her closer as he bent down, “You're completely bizarre.”

He gave her a brief kiss, confirming that the nerve endings in his lips were functioning properly. He took a breath and looked into the Doctor's eyes. It was hard to say whether the stars he saw there were a reflection of the night sky or from the vast universe she carried within her.

A sudden thought tickled Bog and he laughed.

“What?” the Doctor drew back.

Bog pulled her back, “I was just thinking, technically, that was my first kiss.”

* * *

 

Dawn let the twelve-legged insect dance over her hand while it followed the light from the screwdriver, “It wants to play! I thought it was like fireflies and it was a mating thing, but it's just that he wants to play, like crows. What smart little things.”

“Pretty too, in their weird way,” Sunny picked one out of his hair and shooed it back into the air.”

The two of them stood, knee-deep in grass, surrounding by the winking of the insects and the steady light of the stars. It was cool and the wind was rustling mysteriously in the grass.

“Is it over, then?” Sunny asked, holding Dawn's hand while they watched the sky.

“I guess it is. For the moment.”

“You'll take me back and drop me off in time for my shift, just like none of this happened.”

“I guess.”

Sunny's chest felt tight. Dawn was going to go whirling off into the stars. He would be stuck on Earth, just like before, except this time he would _know_ that he was stuck. Before it was just life. You walked on the surface of the world and knew that anything beyond that was out of your reach.

“I mean,” Dawn took his other hand and swung their hands back and forth a little, “if you want. But after your shift ends . . . are you free?”

The cord tied around Sunny's chest broke and fell away, leaving him able to breathe freely again. The shy look on Dawn's face, the puffs of her hair nodding in the breeze, the sparkle of light glittering from under her eyelashes . . . she was beautiful. She was new. Her sister was like some ancient stone, craggy furrows worn into her by time and trouble. Dawn, just like her name, was new, just peeking over the horizon. Sunny wanted to follow her and see new things together.

“Well,” Sunny could only barely keep himself from grinning, “actually, I kind of have a family dinner I have to help set up. Big deal, the whole family, aunts, uncles, cousins. Even an army of plant people could stop us.”

“Oh,” Dawn dropped his hands, drooping a little, “yeah. Can't skip out on family. I guess we'll just—”

“But,” Sunny took her hands again, “are _you_ free to come to the dinner?”

“Your family dinner?”

“Yeah, we're all allowed to bring dates, but only if we're super serious. No casual flings allowed. It's my grandma's rule. Family only.”

“Family only?”

“Yeah, well,” Sunny's face was suddenly hot, “I mean, I don't know how this is going to end up, but . . . I'm—I'm kind of serious. About you.”

Dawn's face lit up brighter than all the stars and lightning bugs around them. She grabbed Sunny by the shoulders and pulled him into a kiss, pushing away all her thoughts about the terrible revelations of the last few days while she slid her fingers through his hair.

Those were endings.

This was a beginning.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not Exactly The End
> 
> I plan to do several epilogues to fill in some details. But, basically, this is over. Y’all got any questions you want answered that were in the main story? Lemme know and I can incorporate them into the epilogues.
> 
> thank you all so so much for reading this super random crossover and enduring endless tree puns

**Author's Note:**

> Bless me father for I have sinned
> 
> I have started another fic when I've got half a dozen that need to be updated
> 
> I am ashamed
> 
> Also a little lost. Send me prompts for this if you like.


End file.
